May 1999 Archives

28 May 1999 | ScienceNOW

Why TB Vaccines Lose Their Teeth

by Alka Agrawal

A vaccine for tuberculosis (TB) has been around since the 1920s, but for some reason, its potency varies greatly around the world. In today's Science, researchers offer a possible explanation--vaccine...

28 May 1999 | ScienceNOW

Close Call for Spallation Source

by David Malakoff

WASHINGTON, D.C.--Materials scientists are breathing easier after a brush with death in Congress. In a last-minute reversal, the House Science Committee voted earlier this week to restore construction funds for...

28 May 1999 | ScienceNOW

The Ultimate Low-Maintenance Engine

by Alexander Hellemans

Any backyard mechanic will tell you that the internal combustion engine depends on a complicated array of rods, valves, springs, and other components. Now scientists have built an engine that's...

27 May 1999 | ScienceNOW

The Father of Taxonomy

by Science News Staff

Today is the 292nd anniversary of the birth of Carolus Linnaeus, the Swedish botanical taxonomist who was the first person to formulate and adhere to a uniform system for defining...

27 May 1999 | ScienceNOW

Neurons Bridge a Broken Spinal Cord

by Kate O'Rourke

For the first time, researchers have witnessed severed spinal cord fibers regrow on their own in adult mammals. The findings, reported in the May issue of Neuron, raise hopes for...

27 May 1999 | ScienceNOW

Martian Relief

by Bernice Wuethrich

A new topographic map has provided the sharpest views yet of the martian landscape, including the plateaus and lowlands that hint at the processes that shaped the planet. The maps,...

26 May 1999 | ScienceNOW

A Battle Plan for Tumors

by Science News Staff

Today is the birthday of Helen Dyer, a biochemist born in 1895 and known for her research on the biological precursors to cancer. Working at the National Cancer Institute, Dyer...

26 May 1999 | ScienceNOW

Genome Draft Ready in a Year, Scientists Say

by Eliot Marshall

COLD SPRING HARBOR, NEW YORK--A dozen scientific teams have endorsed an international plan to complete a "working draft" of the human genome by the spring of 2000 and polish it...

26 May 1999 | ScienceNOW

Hot Trail of Stolen Genes

by Mark Sincell

In a case of genetic thievery of astounding proportions, researchers describe in today's Nature how a hot-springs bacterium snatched nearly a quarter of its genes from another species. Scientists once...

25 May 1999 | ScienceNOW

NIH Proposes Rules for Materials Exchange

by Martin Enserink

Over the last 2 decades, scientists have witnessed the gradual erosion of a cornerstone of scientific progress: the free exchange of research materials like reagents, cells, and animals. The invasion...

25 May 1999 | ScienceNOW

U.K. Government Fights Anti-GM Tide

by Helen Gavaghan

In a move intended to restore public confidence in Britain's ability to regulate genetically modified (GM) foods and crop planting, the government last week announced the creation of two new...

25 May 1999 | ScienceNOW

New Estimate of Universal Expansion

by Science News Staff

A group of astronomers announced today that they have finally nailed down the so-called Hubble constant, the rate at which the universe is currently expanding. Combined with the other object...

24 May 1999 | ScienceNOW

Deep Blue to Tackle Business Projects

by Mark Sincell

IBM announced today that it will spend $29 million to launch an international collaboration to train supercomputer firepower on business problems, such as managing investment risk and scheduling airline routes....

24 May 1999 | ScienceNOW

DNA Therapy Works Better Under Pressure

by Daniel Radov

A high-pressure solution can dramatically improve the delivery of therapeutic DNA into cells, without the need for carrier viruses. The finding, reported in tomorrow's Proceedings of the National Academy of...

24 May 1999 | ScienceNOW

New Memory Chip Could Boost Computer Speeds

by Robert F. Service

A radical new computer chip architecture may increase memory and allow computer users to begin work instantly after turning on a machine. In the 13 May issue of Electronics Letters,...

21 May 1999 | ScienceNOW

He Had the Heart at Heart

by Science News Staff

The man who invented the electrocardiogram was born on this day in 1860. In 1903, Dutch physiologist Willem Einthoven devised the Einthoven galvanometer, an instrument that allowed him to measure...

21 May 1999 | ScienceNOW

Rockefeller Finances Crop Circle Survey

by Constance Holden

Chalk it up to millennium madness: Crop circles, like bellbottoms, are back in fashion. Billionaire Laurance Rockefeller is financing what is billed as a scientific survey aimed to sort hoaxes...

21 May 1999 | ScienceNOW

New Dates for the Dawn of Dream Time

by Carl Zimmer

Researchers say a skeleton unearthed decades ago in the sand dunes of Lake Mungo, Australia, may be tens of thousands of years older than once assumed. The findings, which appear...

20 May 1999 | ScienceNOW

NASA Jumps on Star Wars Bandwagon

by David Malakoff

Why go see interplanetary travel in the movies when the real thing could be just around the corner? In an 18 May press release, NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in...

20 May 1999 | ScienceNOW

Enzyme Suggests Way to Halt Huntington's

by Oliver Baker

By tinkering with an enzyme in the brain cells of mice, medical researchers may have opened the door to a treatment for Huntington's disease, an as-yet-untreatable progressive brain disorder. The...

20 May 1999 | ScienceNOW

Earth's Sloppy Message to the Universe

by Govert Schilling

What is 370,967 data bits long, might be read by aliens, and contains two typos? It's an interstellar radio message, slated to be beamed to the stars Monday by a...

19 May 1999 | ScienceNOW

New Moon for Uranus

by Govert Schilling

An astronomer has discovered a small moon of the planet Uranus that was captured on photos by the probe Voyager 2 (see below) but overlooked for more than 13 years....

19 May 1999 | ScienceNOW

Hubble Snaps Martian Hurricane

by Mark Sincell

Astronomers spotted a huge hurricane on 27 April as it snaked around the North pole of Mars. Nearly four times larger than the state of Texas, the swirling cyclonic system,...

19 May 1999 | ScienceNOW

Electrons' Charge Divided by Five

by Alexander Hellemans

Every science student is taught that the indivisible unit of charge is that of the electron. But 2 years ago, scientists found that charge sometimes shatters into "quasi-particles" that have...

18 May 1999 | ScienceNOW

An Original Green Thumb

by Science News Staff

Today would have been the 96th birthday of Frits Went, a Dutch-born American botanist who discovered the role of the plant hormone auxin and paved the way for the development...

18 May 1999 | ScienceNOW

Panel Pans Potato Safety Study

by Helen Gavaghan

HEBDEN BRIDGE, U.K.--A scientific panel today called the study that triggered widespread alarm in the United Kingdom over the safety of transgenic crops "flawed." The panel, convened by Britain's Royal...

18 May 1999 | ScienceNOW

Super Artificial Cells

by Kevin Boyd

Researchers have used fairly simple polymers to build cell-sized sacks that are as flexible as real cell membranes, but much stronger. The sacks could be used as a new way...

18 May 1999 | ScienceNOW

Nobel Biochemist to Head Alien Biology Institute

by David Malakoff

A new NASA institute dedicated to studying how life might evolve elsewhere in the universe has finally found a leader. Space agency chief Daniel Goldin today named Nobel Prize-winning biochemist...

17 May 1999 | ScienceNOW

Prosthesis Prevents Phantom Pains

by Michael Hagmann

For people missing an arm or a leg, a sophisticated artificial limb may do more than just restore some of their capacities. A report in the June issue of Nature...

17 May 1999 | ScienceNOW

Hunger Buster

by Science News Staff

Today is the birthday of Elvin Stakman, a U.S. plant pathologist born in 1885 who developed ways to combat crop diseases and helped spur international cooperation in this area. After...

17 May 1999 | ScienceNOW

Duke Resumes Clinical Studies

by Eliot Marshall

After a 4-day shutdown by the federal government, the Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, has been given a green light to start enrolling patients in clinical trials...

17 May 1999 | ScienceNOW

Time Cues Help the Brain See Objects

by Marcia Barinaga

Our brains are virtuosos at linking the disjointed parts of an object that is heavily obscured, such as a figure seen through dense woods. A report in this week's Science...

14 May 1999 | ScienceNOW

Building Blocks From the Primordial Soup

by Science News Staff

Forty-six years ago tomorrow, American chemist Stanley Miller gave a jolt to the debate on the origins of life with the publication in Science of his famous paper, "A Production...

14 May 1999 | ScienceNOW

Sperm Cells Find a New Job

by Michael Hagmann

Researchers trying to produce drug-secreting sheep or "humanized" pigs that may serve as organ donors could soon have a new tool for inserting exotic DNA into animals' genomes: sperm. The...

14 May 1999 | ScienceNOW

Your DNA in a Knot

by Gretchen Vogel

Any sailor worth her salt knows how to tie a bowline, with the trailing edge of the rope tucked underneath to make a knot. Healthy cells, it seems, perform a...

14 May 1999 | ScienceNOW

Giant New Telescope Bags Gamma Ray Burst

by Govert Schilling

The Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, the world's most powerful telescope, has bagged its first gamma ray burst, less than 6 weeks after the start of its regular observations....

13 May 1999 | ScienceNOW

Core Belief

by Science News Staff

The discoverer of Earth's inner core, Danish geophysicist Inge Lehman, was born on this day in 1888. After studying the shock waves from earthquakes recorded on seismographs, Lehman proposed that...

13 May 1999 | ScienceNOW

Plea for Global Ocean Watch System

by Michael Hagmann

WASHINGTON, D.C.--Federal officials on Thursday presented the U.S. Congress with a plan to establish a global program to collect data from the world's oceans, modeled after a surveillance system used...

13 May 1999 | ScienceNOW

Flipping Atoms in a Flash

by Meher Antia

Researchers have found a very fast way to flip the magnetic alignment of atoms in a layer of nickel and iron, using an ultrashort pulse of laser light. The finding,...

12 May 1999 | ScienceNOW

Cold-Blooded Critters Reveal Their Secret

by Oliver Baker

Scientists think they may have solved a mystery as old as the first polar sea expeditions: Why do cold-water animals grow so much larger than their warm-water cousins? The answer...

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