More Stories from the November 18, 2006 issue
- Earth
The African source of the Amazon’s fertilizer
More than half of the airborne dust that provides vital nutrients to the Amazonian rainforest comes from a small corner of the Sahara.
- Chemistry
Were Viking landers blind to life?
The Viking landers may have missed potential signs of life when they explored Mars in 1976.
- Earth
Farm salmon spread deadly lice
In the Pacific Northwest, sea lice that spread from cultivated salmon to their wild counterparts have become major parasites affecting the wild population.
- Astronomy
Black hole survey
Scanning the sky for high-energy X rays, a NASA satellite found more than 200 supermassive black holes within 400 million light-years of Earth.
- Paleontology
Asian amber yields oldest known bee
A tiny chunk of amber from Southeast Asia contains the remains of a bee that's at least 35 million years older than any reported fossil of similar bees.
- Astronomy
Nearest extrasolar planet
Astronomers have confirmed the existence of the nearest known planet beyond the solar system.
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Revving up recall while fast asleep
Scientists have discovered a way to give memory a modest lift while people slumber.
- Animals
Hey, that’s me!
A test with a jumbo-size mirror suggests that Asian elephants may be among the few species that can recognize their own images.
- Anthropology
Ancient Gene Yield: New methods retrieve Neandertals’ DNA
Researchers have retrieved and analyzed a huge chunk of Neandertal DNA.
- Astronomy
Dark Fingerprints: Hubble sheds light on cosmic expansion
The mysterious cosmic push that's tearing up the universe began revving up about 5 billion years ago.
- Tech
Unstoppable Bot: Armed with self-scrutiny, a mangled robot moves on
Roboticists have made a walking machine that carries on despite serious damage.
- Health & Medicine
More Evidence of Protection: Circumcision reduces STD risk in men
Circumcised men are less likely to get sexually transmitted diseases than uncircumcised men are.
- Tech
Cleanup Speedup: Device improves oil-spill recovery
By adding grooves to the surface of a common oil-skimming device, researchers recovered up to three times as much oil as they do with smooth-surfaced devices.
- Animals
Chicken Speak: Birds pass test for fancy communication
The chicken may be the first animal other than primates that's been shown to make sounds that, like words, represent something in the environment. With audio.
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Derailing a Disease: Stem cells slow dogs’ muscular dystrophy
Injecting a special type of stem cell into dogs with the canine equivalent of Duchenne muscular dystrophy significantly slowed the disease's progression.
- Earth
Dashing Rogues
Rogue waves, which tower over the waves that surround them, are probably more common than scientists had previously suspected.
- Anthropology
Evolution’s Mystery Woman
A heated debate has broken out among anthropologists over whether a highly publicized partial skeleton initially attributed to a new, tiny species of human cousins actually comes from a pygmy Homo sapiens with a developmental disorder.
- Humans
Letters from the November 18, 2006, issue of Science News
Sunny side heads up “Rare Uranian eclipse” (SN: 9/9/06, p. 166) tells us, “Because the moons of Uranus orbit at the planet’s equator, the sun seldom illuminates them directly.” I think what you mean is that the moons seldom pass directly between Uranus and the sun. But surely the sun still illuminates them, even when […]
