October 1998 Archives

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14 October 1998 | ScienceNOW

New Material Sends Data Storage Into Overdrive

by Dennis Normile

Japanese researchers have identified an oxide material that may soon greatly improve the storage capacity of hard disks and magnetic tapes. The discovery, reported in tomorrow's issue of Nature, relies...

14 October 1998 | ScienceNOW

Fly Eyes Prevent Blurry Vision

by Cassie Ferguson

There's no gold medal in sight, but at least one species of fly manages to avoid obscured vision during flight by borrowing a page from Olympic ice skaters. The solution,...

14 October 1998 | ScienceNOW

Welfare Economist Wins Nobel

by David Malakoff

An Indian scholar who pioneered the theory behind the economics of poverty--and also demonstrated its practical applications--has won the 1998 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science. In awarding today's prize,...

13 October 1998 | ScienceNOW

Recovered SOHO Passes Health Check

by Alexander Hellemans

NAPLES, ITALY--After 4 months of nail-biting over the fate of one of their most successful research spacecraft ever, solar astronomers are breathing a sigh of relief this week. After spinning...

13 October 1998 | ScienceNOW

NO News Is Good News for Medicine Nobelists

by Nigel Williams

Three U.S. researchers learned yesterday that they will share the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering that the gas nitric oxide (NO) acts as a messenger molecule in...

13 October 1998 | ScienceNOW

A Glimpse of Forbidden Charges Leads to Physics Nobel

by James Glanz

No one has figured out how to chop up an electron--or the apparently indivisible charge it carries. But in the early 1980s, three researchers did manage to make the crowds...

13 October 1998 | ScienceNOW

Virtual Chemistry Garners Nobel Prizes

by Ivan Amato

Two quantum chemists whose work helped make computational studies of molecules an everyday activity for scientists were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry today. Walter Kohn of the University of...

9 October 1998 | ScienceNOW

An Anemic Inheritance

by Science News Staff

Sixty-one years ago this month, W. Warrick Cardozo published a paper in the Archives of Internal Medicine entitled, "Immunologic Studies in Sickle Cell Anemia," which reported the results of one...

9 October 1998 | ScienceNOW

Bear Armor and Frisky Clams Win Ig Nobels

by Cassie Ferguson

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS--While suspense builds for next week's announcement of the Nobel Prizes in science, a few of the past laureates gathered at Harvard University last night to help celebrate more...

9 October 1998 | ScienceNOW

Strange Force on Spacecraft Deflated

by Govert Schilling

The mysteriously aberrant motion of the two Pioneer spacecraft in the distant solar system may not be so mysterious after all. Last month, an apparently inexplicable force prompted NASA scientists...

9 October 1998 | ScienceNOW

California Adopts Controversial Standards

by Gretchen Vogel

Third graders in California will be taught about the periodic table and sixth graders will learn about Earth's "lithospheric plates" under a new set of standards approved today by the...

8 October 1998 | ScienceNOW

Crystal Puts a Kink in Light

by Andrew Watson

E-mail and other telecommunications zip across the globe via satellite as microwaves or through optical fibers as infrared light. But there's a logjam at either end of such transmissions: The...

8 October 1998 | ScienceNOW

Rosy Outlook on Oldest Galaxies

by Ann Finkbeiner

Hidden in a corner of the nondescript patch of sky called the Hubble Deep Field, astronomers have found what are almost certainly the farthest and oldest galaxies ever seen. So...

8 October 1998 | ScienceNOW

Clocking Cocaine Addiction

by Jennifer Couzin-Frankel

By plying rats with cocaine, researchers have inched closer to defining the boundary between drug use and addiction. Their study, published in tomorrow's issue of Science, shows that rats crave...

7 October 1998 | ScienceNOW

Master of the Atomic Shell Game

by Science News Staff

Today is the birthday of Niels Bohr, a Danish physicist born in 1885, who elucidated the structure of the atom and explained the process of nuclear fission. Working with Ernest...

7 October 1998 | ScienceNOW

Chemist Tapped to Head Genomics Institute

by Robert F. Service

The Swiss life sciences giant Novartis is expected to name University of California, Berkeley, chemist Peter Schultz as the director of its new Novartis Institute for Functional Genomics. Last spring,...

7 October 1998 | ScienceNOW

Thinking the Unthinkable

by Jennifer Couzin-Frankel

Scientists have shown that the human brain is engaged by words and numbers flashed so fast that they don't have time to register in a person's consciousness. The findings, which...

7 October 1998 | ScienceNOW

Pesticides Pollute Mountain Slopes

by Robert Irion

Surprisingly high levels of pesticides and industrial pollutants sully the snows of western Canada's stunning mountain ranges, ecologists have found. According to a study in tomorrow's Nature, these toxic compounds...

6 October 1998 | ScienceNOW

NASA Buys Time, Bails Out Russian Agency

by David Malakoff

WASHINGTON, D.C.--U.S. scientists planning research projects aboard the international space station have long fretted that their experiments would get short shrift from astronauts too busy putting the station together to...

6 October 1998 | ScienceNOW

A Furry Lab for Huntington's

by Christie Aschwanden

Scientists have developed the first true animal model of Huntington's disease, a progressive and often fatal deterioration of the central nervous system. The achievement, described in this month's Nature Genetics,...

6 October 1998 | ScienceNOW

Probing the Milky Way's Black Heart

by Govert Schilling

Astronomers have taken their closest look yet at the black hole in the heart of our galaxy and uncovered a mystery. Just outside the hole, electrons torn from matter falling...

6 October 1998 | ScienceNOW

Deep Chill Triggers Record-Breaking Ozone Hole

by Richard A. Kerr

WASHINGTON, D.C.--This year's thinning of the stratospheric ozone layer over Antarctica is as severe as almost any seen before, and it stretches over an area larger than North America, a...

5 October 1998 | ScienceNOW

Seeing the Trees for the Forest

by Kevin Boyd

If you find it hard to concentrate on the barrage of images in television ads and hyperactive Web sites, you aren't alone. According to a paper in the latest Science,...

5 October 1998 | ScienceNOW

Murderers Unmasked by Pollen

by Amy Adams

By sampling pollen from victims in a mass grave, scientists may have sniffed out what time of year the men were executed--crucial evidence that could shed light on the identity...

5 October 1998 | ScienceNOW

Three Spending Bills Bolster Research

by David Malakoff

WASHINGTON, D.C.--Congress last week sent a mostly upbeat message to researchers that it is ready to give basic science a fresh infusion of cash for the 1999 fiscal year, which...

2 October 1998 | ScienceNOW

Cancer Most Fowl

by Science News Staff

Tomorrow is the birthday of Francis Peyton Rous, an American pathologist known for his pioneering research on cancer. In 1909, Rous was given a Plymouth Rock chicken with a large...

2 October 1998 | ScienceNOW

Saber-Toothed Surprise

by Erik Stokstad

SNOWBIRD, UTAH--A new species of saber-toothed cat, unveiled here yesterday at the annual meeting of the Society for Vertebrate Paleontology, has startled paleontologists with its fearsome, Arnold Schwarzenegger-like features. The...

2 October 1998 | ScienceNOW

Bug Vanquishes Species

by Dan Ferber

For the first time, scientists have documented an infection wiping out an entire species, in this case a type of land snail. Experts say the finding, reported in this month's...

2 October 1998 | ScienceNOW

Spanish R&D Promised Big Raise

by Alicia Rivera

MADRID--In an effort to invigorate its poorly funded science community, the Spanish government this week announced plans to ask for a major increase in research funding in the 1999 budget....

1 October 1998 | ScienceNOW

Comet Catcher

by Science News Staff

The first comet to be discovered by telescope was spotted 151 years ago today by Maria Mitchell (1818-1889), the first well-known woman astronomer in the United States. While working as...

1 October 1998 | ScienceNOW

NASA Turns 40

by Jennifer Couzin-Frankel

With activities ranging from a puppet show to a picnic to an inflatable space lab, NASA celebrated its 40th birthday today at centers across the country. The space agency was...

1 October 1998 | ScienceNOW

New Faces for Famous Dinos

by Erik Stokstad

SNOWBIRD, UTAH--The popular image of a Tyrannosaurus rex licking its snarling lips may have to be kissed goodbye. According to research presented here today at the annual meeting of the...

1 October 1998 | ScienceNOW

Mexican Fires Charge Distant Clouds

by Robert Irion

The ancient Greeks believed that lightning bolts sprang from the rage of Zeus in his home on Olympus. Now an odd new discovery suggests that Zeus' moods have a long...

1 October 1998 | ScienceNOW

Billion-Year-Old Worms: An Earth-Shattering Find?

by Richard A. Kerr

Could paleontologists have overlooked a third of the history of animals preserved in the fossil record? That's the startling implication of what appear to be worm tracks in 1.1-billion-year-old sandstone,...