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November 1998 Archives

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30 November 1998 | ScienceNOW

Bouncing Sand That Made Waves

by Science News Staff
Today is the birthday of Ernst Chladni, a German physicist born in 1756 who helped found the science of acoustics. Chladni, who was a lawyer and music lover as well...
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30 November 1998 | ScienceNOW

High Court Hears Census Debate

by David Kestenbaum
WASHINGTON, D.C.--The bitter partisan battle over whether the Census Bureau may use statistical sampling to estimate the nation's population in the 2000 census landed at the feet of the Supreme...
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30 November 1998 | ScienceNOW

South Africa's AIDS Drug Policy Draws Criticism

by Michael Balter
PARIS--Controversy has erupted over the South African government's decision to withhold the antiviral drug AZT from pregnant women infected with HIV--despite the compound's demonstrated effectiveness at preventing transmission of the...
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30 November 1998 | ScienceNOW

DNA Suggests Cultural Traits Affect Whale Evolution

by Gretchen Vogel
In some species of whales, behaviors learned within families may be altering the course of genetic evolution. In the current Science, Hal Whitehead of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia,...
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25 November 1998 | ScienceNOW

Death of the Sea Floor

by Science News Staff
Tomorrow is the 69th birthday of Seiya Uyeda, a Japanese geophysicist known for his contributions to plate tectonics. From 1957 to 1964, Uyeda studied island arcs, the series of island...
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25 November 1998 | ScienceNOW

Galileo Blacks Out Again

by Alexander Hellemans
The Galileo spacecraft unexpectedly shut down on 22 November, just before it was to fly by Europa. NASA engineers had the spacecraft operating normally a day later, but they lost...
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25 November 1998 | ScienceNOW

Easier Transplants With Umbilical Blood

by Gretchen Vogel
Bone marrow transplants can be a lifesaver, replenishing the source of blood cells after radiation or chemotherapy destroys it. But for some patients with blood disease, no matching donor can...
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25 November 1998 | ScienceNOW

Keeping Mutations at Bay

by Elizabeth Pennisi
Key players among the cell's stress management consultants, some heat shock proteins may spend their down time preventing mutations from turning into physical deformities. A study of fruit flies, reported...
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24 November 1998 | ScienceNOW

HIV Marches On

by Erik Stokstad and Michael Balter
PARIS--The number of people infected with HIV rose 10% this year, to an estimated 33.4 million worldwide, according to a report released today by the Joint United Nations Programme on...
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24 November 1998 | ScienceNOW

Richter Steps Down at SLAC

by David Kestenbaum
Burton Richter, director of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), announced this week that he will be resigning the post next August. After 15 years at the helm, "it's time...
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24 November 1998 | ScienceNOW

Hairy Mice Hint at Baldness Remedy

by Elizabeth Pennisi
A protein involved in cancer can also stimulate new hair growth in mice, suggesting a possible approach for curing baldness. The protein, called b-catenin, is part of a biochemical pathway...
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23 November 1998 | ScienceNOW

The Attraction of Gases

by Science News Staff
Today is the 161st anniversary of the birth of Johannes van der Waals, a Dutch physical chemist known for his theories about gases and interatomic forces. Van der Waals described...
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23 November 1998 | ScienceNOW

Queen-of-the-Hill Gene?

by David Kestenbaum
Ants are social animals (try sharing your home with 100,000 in-laws) that live by a complex social code. Many house rules were thought to be flexible: When food is scarce,...
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23 November 1998 | ScienceNOW

Hubble Telescope Heads South, to Early Universe

by Donald Goldsmith
A flash of news from the Hubble Space Telescope: The distant universe looks about the same in two opposite directions. Three years ago astronomers made a 10-day exposure of a...
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20 November 1998 | ScienceNOW

A Discovery That Didn't Stop Growing

by Science News Staff
Today is the birthday of Edwin Hubble, an American astronomer born in 1889 who is famous for discovering that the universe contains galaxies outside of our own and is expanding....
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20 November 1998 | ScienceNOW

The Molecules That Keep Species From Mingling

by Gretchen Vogel
Mate a crocodile and an abalone, the old joke goes, and you'll get a crock-a-baloney. But seriously, scientists know very little about the specific genes that keep flings between more...
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20 November 1998 | ScienceNOW

UN to Move on Gene Resolution

by Jennifer Couzin-Frankel
The United Nations (UN) is nearing approval of a resolution calling for restrictions on human gene research and respect for genetic diversity. Last week, a UN committee approved the Resolution...
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20 November 1998 | ScienceNOW

Long Bake Does SOHO Good

by David Malakoff
Talk about a silver lining. When a $1 billion solar observatory spun hopelessly out of control in June and lost power, astronomers feared that extreme heat and cold would ruin...
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19 November 1998 | ScienceNOW

Anatomy of an Adrenaline Rush

by Science News Staff
How stress hormones unleash a surge of energy was explained by Earl Sutherland, a biochemist born 83 years ago today. Sutherland found that adrenaline accelerates the breakdown of sugar in...
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19 November 1998 | ScienceNOW

Station Launch Hides Lingering Woes

by Richard Stone
MOSCOW--Russian rockets are scheduled to launch the first piece of the international space station from Kazakhstan tomorrow. But plans for Russian scientific experiments have been grounded by the country's recent...
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19 November 1998 | ScienceNOW

New Tributary to the River of Life

by Elizabeth Pennisi
The cellular fountain of youth has another wellspring. In tomorrow's Science, biologists report the discovery of a second enzyme that can slow the aging of cells. The enzyme, called tankyrase,...
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19 November 1998 | ScienceNOW

China Faces Health Crisis

by Nigel Williams
Smoking will kill 100 million men in China--one in every three now younger than 30--by the time they reach middle or old age, according to two papers published in tomorrow's...
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18 November 1998 | ScienceNOW

Brazil's Budget Crunch Crushes Science

by CÁSsio Leite Vieira
RIO DE JANEIRO--Brazil's scientific institutions are facing insolvency in the midst of Brazil's economic downturn. To meet the demands of the International Monetary Fund and other foreign lenders, who last...
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18 November 1998 | ScienceNOW

Drug Duo Fights Hepatitis C

by Kevin Boyd
A combination drug therapy for hepatitis C has cured almost half of patients tested. Experts say the results, described in tomorrow's New England Journal of Medicine, make a good case...
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18 November 1998 | ScienceNOW

Hawaii and Iceland's Deep Roots

by Robert Irion
The volcanoes of Hawaii and Iceland may be fueled by hot rock that has traveled thousands of kilometers through the Earth's mantle. The research, reported in tomorrow's Nature, may help...
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17 November 1998 | ScienceNOW

Chemical Audit of a Single Neuron

by Dan Ferber
LOS ANGELES--Scientists have developed an electronic nose, of sorts, that sniffs out dozens of chemicals in an individual nerve cell. The remarkable achievement, described here last week at the annual...
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17 November 1998 | ScienceNOW

Argentine Eggs Bear Embryonic Dino Tissue

by Erik Stokstad
The first fossils of embryonic dinosaur skin are among the treasures from a huge nesting ground in Argentina, described today in New York City at a joint press conference of...
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17 November 1998 | ScienceNOW

Ethics Panel Urges Scrutiny of Mental Health Research

by Eliot Marshall
WASHINGTON, D.C.--Brushing aside research agencies' worries about increasing regulation, a presidential panel today called for tighter control of the way mental patients and other people with impaired judgment are enrolled...
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16 November 1998 | ScienceNOW

NASA Taps Space Science Chief

by Science News Staff
WASHINGTON, D.C.--NASA administrator Daniel Goldin today filled a prominent science job at the agency left in limbo since last February, naming Edward Weiler as associate administrator for NASA's Office of...
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16 November 1998 | ScienceNOW

Leonids on the Web

by Dennis Normile
TOKYO--When the annual Leonid meteor showers peak tomorrow, the sun will be high over North America and prevent fans from viewing the most spectacular displays. But skywatchers with Internet access...
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16 November 1998 | ScienceNOW

Can Interleukin Smoke Out Hidden HIV?

by Nigel Williams
Potent cocktails of anti-HIV drugs have been enormously successful in keeping AIDS at bay in HIV-infected people. But although these "combination" therapies can knock down the virus to undetectable levels,...
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13 November 1998 | ScienceNOW

Twelve Candles for 60 Carbons

by Science News Staff
The buckyball, a 60-carbon molecule shaped like a soccer ball, made its debut 13 years ago today in the pages of Nature. The discovery came while British chemist Harold Kroto...
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13 November 1998 | ScienceNOW

New Light on Plant Signals

by Kevin Boyd
Genes for a receptor that helps transmit nerve signals in animals have been found in, of all things, plants. While this doesn't mean you should talk to your broccoli, it...
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13 November 1998 | ScienceNOW

Leonids on the Web

by Dennis Normile
TOKYO--When the annual Leonid meteor showers peak next week, the sun will be high over North America and prevent fans from viewing the most spectacular displays. But skywatchers with Internet...
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12 November 1998 | ScienceNOW

Casts of Thousands

by Science News Staff
Tilly Edinger, a vertebrate paleontologist who pioneered the study of how brains have evolved over the eons, was born on 13 November 1897. The German-born researcher, who immigrated to the...
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12 November 1998 | ScienceNOW

Ancient Flecks From Doomed Stars

by Robert Irion
Geochemists have dissolved bits of two meteorites to extract mineral grains spawned by stars before our solar system was born. The ancient stardust includes just the second known oxygen-rich grain...
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12 November 1998 | ScienceNOW

Dinosaur Sushi?

by Erik Stokstad
Paleontologists have unearthed what may have been the most terrifying fisheater in history: a 3-meter-tall dinosaur that sported claws like giant meat hooks and a crocodilelike snout. The discovery of...
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12 November 1998 | ScienceNOW

Deep Space 1 Flames Out

by David Malakoff
The novel ion engine powering NASA's Deep Space 1 asteroid probe unexpectedly shut down on Tuesday, just minutes after being started for the first time. But space agency engineers believe...
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11 November 1998 | ScienceNOW

Did Supernova Blaze Unnoticed in 13th Century Sky?

by Robert Irion
Astronomers think they have spied the glowing remnants of a star that blew up surprisingly close to Earth just 700 years ago. Radiation from the star's embers and a rare...
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11 November 1998 | ScienceNOW

Helping Liver Cells Heal Themselves

by Trisha Gura
Researchers have come up with a new cut-and-paste technique that corrects tiny errors in a gene that makes a crucial liver enzyme in rats. The findings, presented this week at...
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