April 1999 Archives

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15 April 1999 | ScienceNOW

New "Solar System" Found

by James Glanz

Astronomers have discovered two new, giant planets around the star Upsilon Andromedae--bringing the total there to three. The findings, which have been submitted to the Astrophysical Journal, suggest that the...

14 April 1999 | ScienceNOW

Found: Black Hole Missing Link

by Mark Sincell

Black holes seem to come in only two varieties: "supermassive" ones, which power quasars and weigh millions to billions of times more than the sun, and "stellar mass" black holes,...

14 April 1999 | ScienceNOW

Gun Lobby Group Backs Data-Access Bill

by Jocelyn Kaiser

In an 11th-hour campaign to tip the scales in their favor, supporters of a controversial new data-access law have flooded the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) with...

14 April 1999 | ScienceNOW

Drink Away Those Ulcers?

by Michael Hagmann

Here's more uplifting news for those who enjoy the good life: A glass of Cabernet or a pint of cold lager could be a good tonic for your stomach. In...

13 April 1999 | ScienceNOW

Peptide Orders Tumor Cell Suicide

by Christie Aschwanden

Most cancer treatments come with a serious downside: They also harm normal cells. Now researchers have found a way to kill tumor cells in test tubes without inflicting any collateral...

13 April 1999 | ScienceNOW

New Virus Fingered in Malaysian Epidemic

by Martin Enserink

Scientists have identified a virus that has killed at least 95 people in Malaysia in the last 6 months, most of them pig farm workers. The culprit was officially named...

13 April 1999 | ScienceNOW

Mega-Publisher Snaps Up Cell

by Helen Gavaghan

Elsevier Science of the Netherlands has bought Cell Press, publisher of the journal Cell and its sister publications Immunity, Neuron, and Molecular Cell. Clearly regarding the acquisition as a coup,...

12 April 1999 | ScienceNOW

Beginnings of a Rout

by Science News Staff

In one of the greatest moments in modern medical science, American microbiologist Jonas Salk on 12 April 1955 pronounced his newly invented polio vaccine safe and effective in almost 90%...

12 April 1999 | ScienceNOW

Ozone Tightens Sunspot Link

by Richard A. Kerr

The "weather" in the stratosphere has for decades mysteriously matched the 11-year cycle of sunspots--dark splotches on the sun's surface that mark an increase in solar activity. Now a group...

12 April 1999 | ScienceNOW

New Move to Protect Imperiled Fish

by David Malakoff

Marine researchers are calling for international action to save the barndoor skate, which they fear could become the first salt water vertebrate to be fished to extinction. Last year, Canadian...

9 April 1999 | ScienceNOW

NAS Report Ranks Vaccine Cost/Benefit

by Michael Hagmann

Developing a new vaccine can cost between $200 and $400 million before it's put on the market. At that price, policy-makers need to choose their targets carefully, and a report...

9 April 1999 | ScienceNOW

Waterman Award Goes to Drug Researcher

by Science News Staff

A chemical engineer working on ways to design new antibiotics has won the National Science Foundation's prestigious Alan T. Waterman award for young researchers. The prize lands Chaitan Khosla of...

9 April 1999 | ScienceNOW

NIH to Screen Controversial Stem Cell Grants

by Eliot Marshall

WASHINGTON, D.C.--The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is moving ahead slowly on its pledge to fund controversial research on human embryonic stem cells. Yesterday, NIH chiefs unveiled a scheme in...

9 April 1999 | ScienceNOW

Taking the Transistors Out of Computers

by Dana Mackenzie

Making a better computer chip today means cramming more transistors onto a silicon wafer. But future computers may not even need transistors, which use electricity to store or relay strings...

8 April 1999 | ScienceNOW

Spiral Star Blowing in the Wind

by Mark Sincell

Astronomers may have solved the riddle of how dust can survive radiation streaming off blazing hot stars. By cleverly masking parts of a giant telescope, a team captured images, unveiled...

8 April 1999 | ScienceNOW

The Teeth Make the Hominid

by Virginia Morell

Some of our ancestors were not a pretty sight, their ugly mugs featuring tall jaws and bony skull crests. Now a researcher argues in tomorrow's Science that the three species...

8 April 1999 | ScienceNOW

Researchers Urged to Go Light on Mouse Antibodies

by David Malakoff

Biomedical researchers should produce most types of monoclonal antibodies using methods that don't require killing mice, according to a report from a National Academy of Sciences panel. But the report...

7 April 1999 | ScienceNOW

Hidden Rainforest Losses

by Kevin Boyd

Enough Amazon rainforest to cover Connecticut was razed last year, according to satellite images. But a new survey, reported in tomorrow's issue of Nature, suggests the loss may be even...

7 April 1999 | ScienceNOW

Pollutants Zapped From the Earth

by Meher Antia

In a technical tour de force, scientists have coaxed a toxic chemical out of contaminated soil without removing or incinerating the soil. The technique, reported in the 1 April issue...

7 April 1999 | ScienceNOW

Desktop Nuclear Fusion, for Real

by Alexander Hellemans

Long the domain of megascience, nuclear fusion conjures up images of massive lasers housed in cavernous buildings. Now physicists have shown that deuterium nuclei can fuse when hit by short,...

6 April 1999 | ScienceNOW

Nobel Bondage

by Science News Staff

One of the most fruitful decades of chemical research began on 6 April 1931, with a landmark paper by Linus Pauling on the relationship between chemical bonds and the magnetic...

6 April 1999 | ScienceNOW

Too Hot to Handle

by Jocelyn Kaiser

Cowed by a heated dispute, the French Physical Society (SFP) announced last week that it will no longer sponsor an award named after the late Lebanese physicist Rammal Rammal. The...

6 April 1999 | ScienceNOW

Block That Plasmodium!

by Michael Hagmann

A DNA vaccine stops malaria from spreading in mice. Instead of conferring immunity, the new vaccine attacks the Plasmodium parasite inside its mosquito host. Experts say the findings, described in...

5 April 1999 | ScienceNOW

Feeling the Heat

by Science News Staff

Frederick Alexander Lindemann, a German-born British physicist who made key discoveries in the study of heat, was born on 4 April 1886. At the age of 25, Lindemann and German...

5 April 1999 | ScienceNOW

Earth Institute Director Bows Out

by Constance Holden

An ambitious attempt to bring scientists from diverse disciplines together to study global problems is about to get fresh leadership. Peter Eisenberger, the controversial director of Columbia University's Earth Institute,...

5 April 1999 | ScienceNOW

New Vaccine for a Common Pneumonia?

by Michael Hagmann

A shot consisting of a single bacterial protein can prevent pneumonia in mice, a study in the April Nature Medicine suggests. If effective in humans, the vaccine could help control...

2 April 1999 | ScienceNOW

Closing the Regeneration Gap

by Science News Staff

Today is the 71st birthday of Elizabeth Hay, an embryologist at Harvard Medical School who, through pioneering studies on regeneration of amphibian limbs, has shed light on the cellular mechanisms...

2 April 1999 | ScienceNOW

Airy Threat to Reefs

by Oliver Baker

Rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere will slow the growth of coral reefs and possibly weaken their limestone skeletons during the next century, scientists predict. The finding, reported in...

2 April 1999 | ScienceNOW

Laundry, Detergent, Mushrooms ...

by Kevin Boyd

That lone red sock soon may no longer be a threat to your white laundry thanks to a mushroom enzyme that neutralizes dyes. Aside from the payoff to launders, molecular...

1 April 1999 | ScienceNOW

Catching Sprites by Radio

by Meher Antia

High above the tumult of thunderstorms, gigantic reddish apparitions called sprites sometimes light the sky for a fraction of a second. So far, the only way to record this fleeting...

1 April 1999 | ScienceNOW

Testing the Mind's Eye

by Marcia Barinaga

It's a decades-old question in cognitive psychology: Does the brain process an imagined object the same way it does a real one? A report in tomorrow's Science may provide the...

1 April 1999 | ScienceNOW

Clot-Buster Built From Scratch

by Menno Schilthuizen

After a heart attack or stroke, patients are often given a drug called heparin to prevent blood clots. Now scientists have assembled a synthetic abridged form of heparin that, in...