More Stories from the September 9, 2000 issue
- Archaeology
Ancient Site Holds Cannibalism Clues
An 800-year-old Anasazi site in Colorado yields contested evidence of cannibalism.
- Astronomy
Telescope unveils a stellar deception
A heavenly masquerade may shed light on the nature of astrophysical jets—the beams of material spewed by a wide variety of celestial objects.
- Earth
Girls may face risks from phthalates
The high incidence of premature breast development in Puerto Rican girls has been linked with phthalates, a family of ubiquitous pollutants found in plastics, lubricants, and solvents.
- Materials Science
Cathedral has weathered London’s acid rain
A decrease in acid rain seems to be responsible for newly reported reduced deterioration rates of St. Paul's Cathedral in London.
- Paleontology
Teeth tell tale of warm-blooded dinosaurs
Evidence locked within the fossil teeth of some dinosaurs may help bolster the view that some of the animals were, at least to some degree, warm-blooded.
- Health & Medicine
Can poliovirus fix spinal cord damage?
Scientists have devised a version of the poliovirus that can deliver genes to motor neurons without harming them, a step toward a gene therapy that reawakens idle neurons in people with spinal cord damage.
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Genetic variation sways risk of diabetes
A gene carried by up to 85 percent of the people in the world increases susceptibility to diabetes by about 25 percent.
- Animals
Strange Y chromosome makes supermom mice
An otherwise rare system of sex determination has evolved independently at least six times in one genus of South American mice.
- Astronomy
Taking a census of brown dwarfs
Researchers have completed the most thorough census to date of brown dwarfs in stellar clusters and have confirmed earlier findings about these failed stars.
- Astronomy
A new receiver for alien broadcasts
A $12.5 million grant will help build the world's largest telescope designed to search for radio broadcasts from alien civilizations.
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Traumas trip up inner-city girls
Inner-city teenage girls may often experience a severe stress reaction that makes it more difficult for them to succeed in school.
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Show me the data
A debate has broken out over whether neuroscientists should share the voluminous data that they generate in their experiments.
- Earth
Cooking up a key chemical of life
Researchers have simulated the conditions and ingredients found at hydrothermal vents to create pyruvic acid, an organic chemical vital for cellular metabolism.
- Earth
Greenland ice variation appears normal
Changes in snowfall observed in parts of southern Greenland between 1978 and 1988 appear to be normal if gauged against the variations recorded in ice cores over the past 400 years.
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- Physics
Through the Looking Glass
A proposed universe of unseen material, where every ordinary particle has a shadowy counterpart, could explain several conundrums in cosmology.
