June 1999 Archives

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14 June 1999 | ScienceNOW

Birth of Beta Blockers

by Science News Staff

Today is the birthday of Sir James Black, a British pharmacologist who revolutionized the treatment of heart ailments and ulcers with his discovery of two important drugs. In an attempt...

11 June 1999 | ScienceNOW

For Astronomers, New Machine Has Soul

by Govert Schilling

The United States and Europe have breathed life into plans to build a giant new astronomical observatory in Chile that could be fully operational in 2009. On Thursday, science officials...

11 June 1999 | ScienceNOW

Studies Vindicate Smokey the Bear

by Daniel Radov

Although Smokey the Bear signs in national forests and parks have warned the public for decades about the dangers of forest fires, the U.S. Forest Service regularly ignores the icon...

11 June 1999 | ScienceNOW

Physicists Edge Closer to Solving Neutrino Riddle

by Mark Sincell

The first neutrinos have been spotted colliding with heavy water molecules in a giant tank at the bottom of an Ontario nickel mine. Announced on Wednesday, the events mark the...

10 June 1999 | ScienceNOW

Engineering the Engine

by Science News Staff

Nikolaus Otto, the German engineer who invented the engine that still drives most modern automobiles, was born on this day in 1832. Otto built the first gasoline-powered internal combustion engine...

10 June 1999 | ScienceNOW

Moonshadow Over Minnesota

by Mark Sincell

Physicists working in an iron mine almost a kilometer underground have detected the "shadow" the moon casts when it blocks cosmic rays streaming toward Earth. Scientists, who announced the feat...

10 June 1999 | ScienceNOW

Butterflies Beat Retreat From Heat

by Menno Schilthuizen

Some people may think global warming is a myth, but butterflies seem to know better. In today's Nature, scientists report that many butterfly species have shifted their range northward by...

9 June 1999 | ScienceNOW

The Man Behind the Mole

by Science News Staff

On this day in 1776, Amedeo Avogadro, an Italian scientist known as one of the founders of physical chemistry, was born. Avogadro studied the properties of electricity and liquids, but...

9 June 1999 | ScienceNOW

A Lunar Tail

by Govert Schilling

The moon already had a face; now it also has a tail. Astronomers from Boston University's Center for Space Physics discovered the faint orange wisp of neutral sodium atoms, perhaps...

9 June 1999 | ScienceNOW

Novel Treatment Stops Mice From Shivering

by Kevin Boyd

Mice with a brain disease that makes them tremble can be partially cured with an injection of stem cells. The experimental treatment, presented in yesterday's issue of the Proceedings of...

9 June 1999 | ScienceNOW

Why Embryos Are in a Hurry

by Sanyin Siang

Scientists have shed some light on the mysterious winnowing process inside a woman's body that sorts good embryos from bad. A study in this week's New England Journal of Medicine...

8 June 1999 | ScienceNOW

Caught in a Trap of Light

by Meher Antia

Physicists have engineered a highly stable laser beam that can trap tiny clouds of atoms for up to 100 times longer than any laser so far could. Reported in the...

8 June 1999 | ScienceNOW

Snails Set New Speed Record

by Daniel Radov

Snails are not known for being fleet of foot, but they may hold at least one speed record. A report in today's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows...

8 June 1999 | ScienceNOW

NASA Chief Irks Astronomers

by James Glanz

One week after chiding particle physicists for being wedded to outdated technology (Science, 4 June, p. 1597), NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin has accused astronomers of lacking a vision of the...

7 June 1999 | ScienceNOW

Berkeley Crew Bags Element 118

by Robert F. Service

Step aside, element 114; there's a new heavyweight champ. Physicists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California announced today that they have created two new superheavy elements, tipping the...

7 June 1999 | ScienceNOW

New Pain Killers May Have a Downside

by Michael Hagmann

When the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the anti-inflammatory drugs Celebrex and Vioxx earlier this year, it marked the start of a new era of custom-designed pain killers that...

7 June 1999 | ScienceNOW

Bright Star Sends Confusing Message

by James Glanz

CHICAGO-- Astronomers are struggling to make sense of the unusual behavior of Eta Carinae, a star in the southern sky. Observations announced at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society...

7 June 1999 | ScienceNOW

Evaluating Evolution

by Science News Staff

Today is the birthday of Otto Schindewolf, a German paleontologist born in 1896 who, after examining the fossil record, raised fundamental questions about the theory of evolution. After studying coral...

4 June 1999 | ScienceNOW

Fresh Eye on the Lens

by Science News Staff

American geneticist Barbara McClintock, who challenged the prevailing theory that genes were stable components of chromosomes with her discovery of "jumping genes," was born on this day in 1902. McClintock...

4 June 1999 | ScienceNOW

Field of Dreams

by Science News Staff

Scientists in Alberta, Canada, are marveling over a field of late Pleistocene fossils and animal footprints laid bare earlier this year in an emptied-out reservoir. The 3-square-kilometer site, located in...

4 June 1999 | ScienceNOW

Doing Well by Doing Good

by Gretchen Vogel

Watching out for others may not be a burden after all, at least for the African mongoose. In today's Science, researchers report that what some had touted as selfless behavior...

4 June 1999 | ScienceNOW

Painting by Numbers

by Elizabeth Finkel

Jackson Pollock's squiggly paintings can fetch millions on the auction block, yet some people think kindergartners are equally adept at this kind of abstract art. Now a study in this...

3 June 1999 | ScienceNOW

Irreverent Song Upsets Math Teachers

by Dana Mackenzie

First it was the early '90s Barbie doll that squealed, "Math is hard." Hardly the inspiring words a child might need to learn arithmetic, countersquealed the National Council of Teachers...

3 June 1999 | ScienceNOW

Clinical Ethics Enforcers Set for Promotion?

by Eliot Marshall

The federal office that watches over the use of human subjects in research is likely to get more clout, if a report to National Institutes of Health (NIH) director Harold...

3 June 1999 | ScienceNOW

Seeking Byte-Savvy Biologists

by David Malakoff

The U.S. government should fund a new network of research centers devoted to churning out biologists skilled in the arts of computer science, a National Institutes of Health (NIH) advisory...

3 June 1999 | ScienceNOW

Computer-Aided Vaccines

by Michael Hagmann

Making a safe and effective vaccine isn't easy. Usually only a handful of protein snippets, or peptides, from a pathogen are able to spark a protective immune response. Now researchers...

3 June 1999 | ScienceNOW

Fickle Mice Highlight Gene-Behavior Woes

by Martin Enserink

Studying the genetics of behavior is often like riding a roller coaster. No sooner has one research group tied a gene to a behavior in a certain animal when along...

2 June 1999 | ScienceNOW

The Scent of Seduction

by Daniel Radov

Orchids use a crafty blend of pheromones to lure pollen-laden male bees to their flowers, biologists report in tomorrow's Nature. The findings suggest that, like ad agencies the world over,...

2 June 1999 | ScienceNOW

Atlantis of the Iguanas

by Douglas Palmer

Submarine volcanoes in the eastern Pacific were once sun-drenched islands that could have been home to iguanas and other creatures now found only on the Galápagos Islands. The discovery of...

2 June 1999 | ScienceNOW

Kidney Rejection Prevented in Monkeys

by Gretchen Vogel

A new drug taken for just a few months has prevented monkeys from rejecting transplanted kidneys. The drug, described in the June Nature Medicine, also lacks the side effects of...

1 June 1999 | ScienceNOW

High-Flying Inventor

by Science News Staff

The inventor of the jet engine was born on this day in 1907. A pilot in the British Royal Air Force, Sir Frank Whittle realized the potential demand for a...

1 June 1999 | ScienceNOW

Come Fly With Me, Goldin Tells Physicists

by James Glanz

BATAVIA, ILLINOIS--Space is the final frontier for particle physics, NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin declared in a 28 May press conference here at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab). But Goldin's...

1 June 1999 | ScienceNOW

Germans Urged to Loosen Up Research

by Robert Koenig

Germany's vaunted research system may be too rigid for its own good. Critics have accused it of being overly hierarchical and slow to respond to hot research areas, and complained...

1 June 1999 | ScienceNOW

The Coolest Brown Dwarfs Proliferate

by James Glanz

CHICAGO--By collecting and cataloging hundreds of millions of celestial objects, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey may turn a rare oddball into a common denizen of the heavens. The $80 million...