December 1998 Archives

31 December 1998 | ScienceNOW

Nestlings Safer Near Farms

by Mari N. Jensen

Farmland would seem to be a bad neighborhood for forest-dwelling birds, because nest predators easily infiltrate scraps of forest that border fields. And yet, these woody strips may actually be...

31 December 1998 | ScienceNOW

Big Freight in the Phloem

by Evelyn Strauss

Plants shuttle their nutrients and messenger molecules through a vast network of pipes, called the phloem. Because this highway system has narrow onramps, biologists had expected the traffic to be...

30 December 1998 | ScienceNOW

Red Rocket Man

by Science News Staff

The man who masterminded the Soviet Union's early triumphs in military and civilian rocketry was born today in 1906. Sergei Korolyov launched his first liquid-fueled rocket in 1933 and helped...

30 December 1998 | ScienceNOW

The Edge of Space

by Govert Schilling

Astronomers from the State University of New York, Stony Brook, have won a race to the edge of the universe. After 3 weeks of working around the clock on infrared...

29 December 1998 | ScienceNOW

When Water Got Heavy

by Science News Staff

Deuterium, which forms the heavy heart of hydrogen bombs, was discovered on this day in 1931. In the 1920s, scientists had predicted that there might be heftier versions of hydrogen...

29 December 1998 | ScienceNOW

El Niño Fills Its Bath

by Meher Antia

The El Niño of 1997 hit many regions hard--toasting Texas, practically drowning parts of California, and burying much of New England under a fierce ice storm. But the pernicious weather...

28 December 1998 | ScienceNOW

On this day in 1944, chemist Lewis Hastings Sarett succeeded in a 2-year quest to synthesize the hormone cortisone, a potent anti-inflammatory. Born in 1917, Sarett joined Merck Research Laboratories...

28 December 1998 | ScienceNOW

Immortality Without Tumors

by Dan Ferber

In ancient Greece, immortality was the province of gods who spun the length of each lifetime. The myth has a kernel of truth, because the ends of chromosomes are protected...

23 December 1998 | ScienceNOW

Jolly Old St. Newton

by Science News Staff

While Christians celebrate Christmas for a particular birth almost 2000 years ago, scientists have two other anniversaries to honor: English physicist James Prescott Joule was born on Christmas Eve in...

23 December 1998 | ScienceNOW

New SLAC Head Named

by David Malakoff

An insider will take the helm of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC). Stanford University announced yesterday that SLAC administrator Jonathan Dorfan will succeed Nobel laureate Burton Richter, who announced...

23 December 1998 | ScienceNOW

Doped-out Sperm Lose Sex Drive

by Karen Hopkin

SAN FRANCISCO--Marijuana may "turn on" neurons, but it appears to turn off sperm. Researchers have shown for the first time that human sperm possess a receptor that can bind to...

23 December 1998 | ScienceNOW

When in Rome, Paint Jerusalem

by David Kestenbaum

Earlier this year archaeologists in Rome stumbled across an ancient mural of a mysterious city. The metropolitan grandeur of the scene suggested to some that it might be Rome, or...

22 December 1998 | ScienceNOW

Chimps in Your Living Room

by Science News Staff

The documentary "Miss Goodall and the Wild Chimpanzees" first aired on U.S. television on this date in 1965. The film brought widespread acclaim to British primatologist Jane Goodall and a...

22 December 1998 | ScienceNOW

Has a Particle of Darkness Come to Light?

by James Glanz

PARIS--A team of scientists working in a laboratory deep in Italy's Apennine Mountains has picked up the strongest hint so far of a strange new particle. Its appearance, which has...

22 December 1998 | ScienceNOW

The Feathered Feminist

by Cassie Ferguson

If male jacana could sing the blues, these birds would have plenty to wail about. While the typical female cavorts wide and far, her loyal partner stays at home and...

21 December 1998 | ScienceNOW

Spacecraft Aborts Asteroid Approach

by Science News Staff

Ground controllers lost contact yesterday with the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) spacecraft, which was preparing to orbit an asteroid next month. The craft apparently shut down after its thrusters...

21 December 1998 | ScienceNOW

Millions of Migrating Mexican Monarchs

by Robert Irion

Subtle chemical traces in the wings of monarch butterflies have revealed where they dine on their beloved milkweed before fluttering to Mexico for the winter. About half of the monarchs...

21 December 1998 | ScienceNOW

Iceland OKs Controversial Health Databank

by Martin Enserink

A private company has received permission from Iceland to build a database containing the health records of the entire nation. But critics of the controversial legislation, which Iceland's parliament passed...

18 December 1998 | ScienceNOW

Radio Head

by Science News Staff

The father of FM radio was born on this day in 1890. In the 1920s, radio broadcasting used only amplitude modulation (AM), in which a signal is transmitted by variations...

18 December 1998 | ScienceNOW

Russia's Science Budget Diving Toward New Low

by Andrei Allakhverdov

MOSCOW--Russian scientists received more gloomy news this week: The government has sent to parliament a 1999 budget that is unlikely to even keep pace with inflation next year and which...

18 December 1998 | ScienceNOW

Science Editor-in-Chief to Step Down

by David Malakof

Science is looking for a new editor. Editor-in-Chief Floyd Bloom last week told the board of directors of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), which publishes Science,...

18 December 1998 | ScienceNOW

Microwave Ripples Reveal a Flat Universe

by James Glanz

PARIS--Astrophysicists may have the best indication yet that the cosmos contains the full complement of matter and energy. Observations of the big bang's faint afterglow, made by two microwave telescopes...

17 December 1998 | ScienceNOW

A Trick of the Eye

by Science News Staff

Jan Purkinje, a histologist and physiologist whose findings led to important insights into how the body works, was born on this day in 1787. Purkinje is famous for explaining visual...

17 December 1998 | ScienceNOW

The Il Effects of Asthma

by Gretchen Vogel

An asthma attack is nothing to sneeze at. In a dramatic--and dangerous--overreaction by the immune system, the lungs pump out mucus and inflammatory molecules, clogging and swelling constricted airways. In...

17 December 1998 | ScienceNOW

G Whizzes Measure Gravity

by David Kestenbaum

Physicists are finally getting a grip on gravity. Gravity's strength, a number called Big G, is perhaps the most elusive of all the fundamental quantities. Over the past few decades...

17 December 1998 | ScienceNOW

Dreaming of Music

by Marcia Barinaga

Although many a college student hopes that his brain will continue cramming for an exam while asleep, scientific proof that that can happen has been scarce. But now scientists report...

16 December 1998 | ScienceNOW

A Colorful Dance of Electrons

by Alexander Hellemans

By bathing electrons in intense light pulses, researchers have forced them to dance in figure-8 shapes and reemit the light in rainbow colors. Theorists predicted the effect, called relativistic Thomson...

16 December 1998 | ScienceNOW

Salty Eels

by Christie Aschwanden

Most third-graders know that panda bears aren't really bears, and starfish aren't really fish. Add freshwater eels to the list of creatures naturalists have misnamed. Japanese researchers report in tomorrow's...

16 December 1998 | ScienceNOW

China Boosts Basic Research

by Xiong Lei

BEIJING--China has chosen 15 projects to inaugurate one of the largest basic research programs in the country's history. The program, which will receive $300 million and run through 2003, has...

15 December 1998 | ScienceNOW

Rat Genes Tell Human Migration History

by Kevin Boyd

When people first sailed around the islands of Polynesia some 3500 years ago, rats often went along for the ride. Now, geneticists are using DNA from these rodents' descendants to...

15 December 1998 | ScienceNOW

South Korea Attacks Academic Inbreeding

by Michael Baker

South Korea wants to imbue its universities with a little fresh blood. The National Assembly is expected to pass a bill this session that would prohibit universities from filling more...

15 December 1998 | ScienceNOW

French Fry Minister's Science Plan

by Michael Balter

PARIS--French scientists mounted an historic protest here yesterday, when more than 800 members of the national governing committee of CNRS--France's giant basic research agency--jammed the ornate House of Chemistry to...

14 December 1998 | ScienceNOW

Faux Virus

by Science News Staff

Thirty-one years ago today, biochemists Arthur Kornberg and Mehran Goulian announced the creation of an artificial copy of DNA that was biologically active and could infect cells. The achievement opened...

14 December 1998 | ScienceNOW

Net Loss: Trawling Critiqued

by David Malakoff

WASHINGTON, D.C.--A group of marine scientists lobbed a warning shot across the bows of the world's trawling fleets today, charging that sweeping the seafloor with heavy nets in search of...

14 December 1998 | ScienceNOW

Ethics Panel Backs New Controls on Tissue Research

by Eliot Marshall

Clinical researchers have received a bioethics package for Christmas, and some may be afraid to open it. It arrived this month in the form of a draft report from the...

11 December 1998 | ScienceNOW

The Chemistry of Champagne Fizz

by Science News Staff

Raise a toast to William Henry, the British chemist. Born on this day tomorrow in 1774, Henry is best known for his studies of the solubility of gases in liquids....

11 December 1998 | ScienceNOW

Bad Genes: Catchin, Hittin, and Rap

by Cassie Ferguson

BOSTON--Scientists have a new theory to explain the Boston Red Sox's 80-years-and-counting without winning a World Series: Poor play resulted from a deletion of the genes responsible for producing the...

11 December 1998 | ScienceNOW

Trees Above the Thunderclouds

by Robert Irion

SAN FRANCISCO--Videos are revealing the fine-scale structure of eerie red flashes that dance delicately atop thunderclouds. Known as "sprites" and resembling high-altitude Christmas trees, the ephemeral flashes show a surprising...

11 December 1998 | ScienceNOW

Why This Particle's Decay Really Matters

by James Glanz

CHICAGO--Scientists working at the giant Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) particle accelerator nearby may have caught a long-sought second glimpse of a phenomenon that could explain one of the biggest...

10 December 1998 | ScienceNOW

When Argentina Got Dusted

by Richard A. Kerr

A massive asteroid smacked coastal Argentina 3.3 million years ago, perhaps cooling climate and driving some of the region's mammals to extinction, researchers report in tomorrow's Science. Although the impact...

December 1998 Archives

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