More Stories from the May 6, 2000 issue
- Health & Medicine
Drug Eases Bone Cancer Pain in Mice
Pain caused by bone cancer in mice can be alleviated somewhat by osteoprotegerin, a drug being tested for osteoporosis, suggesting a possible new treatment for people with this cancer.
- Physics
Intergalactic magnetism runs deep and wide
Mounting evidence that magnetic fields of surprising strength permeate intergalactic space raises questions about how the fields form and what effects they have.
- Paleontology
Africa’s east coast netted ancient humans
Excavations of an exposed reef on Africa's Red Sea coast indicate that humans lived there 125,000 years ago, pushing back the date for the earliest seaside settlement by at least 10,000 years.
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Leggy beetles show how insects lost limbs
Inactivating two genes in red flour beetles causes grubs to grow lots of legs—and provides clues to the puzzle of the evolution of the six-legged body plan.
- Astronomy
X-ray satellite goes the distance
Using the sharp X-ray eye of an orbiting observatory, astronomers have employed a novel method to measure distance within the Milky Way.
- Plants
New gene-altering strategy tested on corn
Scientists have created herbicide-resistant corn with a new kind of genetic engineering that involves subtly altering one of the plant's own genes rather than adding a new gene.
- Tech
Civilians get better GPS
President Clinton directed the Defense Department to stop degrading signals from 24 Global Positioning System satellites, allowing civilians to receive the same location-pinpointing accuracy long available to the U.S. military.
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Ah, my pretty, you’re…#&! a beetle pile!
Hundreds of tiny, young blister beetles cluster into lumps resembling female bees and hitchhike on the male bees that they seduce.
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Genes, genes, and more genes
Scientists have almost finished sequencing the genes of rice and of a man.
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Disabled genes dull sense of smell
Mutated genes may explain why humans have a poor sense of smell.
- Health & Medicine
Berry promising anticancer prospects
Cranberry products can retard the growth and spread of breast cancer in rodents.
- Health & Medicine
A different GI link to colon cancers
Diets rich in sweets and other quickly digested carbohydrates appear to increase an individual's risk of developing colon cancer.
- Math
Spinning to a rolling stop
Air viscosity makes the rolling speed of a spinning, tipping coin go up as its energy goes down until the coin suddenly stops.
- Math
Traffic woes of the single driver
At moderate traffic volumes, a single car moving at randomly fluctuating speeds can cause traffic jams in its wake.
- Math
Whirling to a chaotic finale
A black hole paired with another body can succumb to chaos when they orbit each other, making it more difficult to detect gravitational waves produced by such objects.
- Physics
Groovy ’70s sound keeps X rays tight
Cast aside as a way to reproduce music, LP phonograph records reveal another, unsuspected talent that scientists plan to exploit-focusing X rays.
- Physics
Magnetic snap gives ions extra pop
Magnetic fields pump heat into ions when field lines of opposite orientation snap and reconnect.
- Math
Changes of Mathematical State
Untangling a web of conflicting demands can be tough on computers.
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