More Stories from the May 26, 2001 issue
-
Soy estrogen laces paper-mill wastes
Paper-mill effluent contains an estrogen-mimicking pollutant at concentrations that may adversely affect reproduction in fish.
-
Caterpillars die rather than switch
A newly identified compound in tomatoes and other plants of the nightshade family turns hornworms into addicts that often starve rather than eat another food.
- Health & Medicine
New drug takes on intestinal cancer
Imatinib mesylate, already approved by the FDA for treating people with a form of leukemia, blocks the activity of certain enzymes that cause gastrointestinal stromal cells to replicate uncontrollably.
- Health & Medicine
Gender bias: Stroke after heart surgery
Women are more likely than men to suffer strokes after heart surgery.
- Materials Science
Future brightens for carbon nanotubes
Researchers have made a lightbulb that depends on carbon nanotubes for its glow.
- Materials Science
Nanotubes form dense transistor array
Researchers have made an array of transistors out of carbon nanotubes.
- Paleontology
Early Mammal’s Jaw Lost Its Groove
A tiny fossil skull found in 195-million-year-old Chinese sediments provides evidence that crucial features of mammal anatomy evolved more than 45 million years earlier than previously thought.
-
Look on the bright side and survive longer
People who, as young adults, describe their lives using a variety of terms for positive emotions live substantially longer than those who express little positive emotion, according to a long-term study of Catholic nuns.
- Health & Medicine
Antibiotic resistance is coming to dinner
Foods tainted with bacteria that antibiotics don't kill are a recipe for more serious—even lethal—infections.
- Chemistry
Designer surface proves deadly to bacteria
Researchers have made a surface coating that kills bacteria on contact in a novel way.
- Health & Medicine
Poliovirus slaughters brain tumors in mice
Scientists have altered a live polio virus, inducing it to target and kill brain tumor cells without causing polio.
-
Slave-making ants get rough in New York
The whole ant slave-making business turns more violent in New York than in West Virginia, even though it features the same species.
- Health & Medicine
Genetic flaw found in painful gut disease
Scientists have discovered a genetic mutation that occurs in people with Crohn's disease, a digestive disorder that attacks the intestines.
- Physics
Electrons trip on tiny semiconductor steps
A first glimpse of how a semiconductor's surface alters electrons' magnetic fields, or spins, suggests that tiny steps in the surfaces are tripping up efforts to create so-called spintronics circuits from semiconductors.
- Astronomy
Captured on Camera: Are They Planets?
Studying several groups of nearby, newborn stars–many of which weren't known until a few years ago–researchers may soon obtain the first image of a bona fide planet orbiting a star other than our sun.
-
A Fly Called Iyaiyai
All that Latin has its light side.
