August 1999 Archives

31 August 1999 | ScienceNOW

Watching Molecules Wander

by Science News Staff

Today is the birthday of Friedrich Paneth, an Austrian chemist who helped develop radioactive tracer techniques widely used in science, engineering, and medicine. In 1912, Paneth and George Charles de...

31 August 1999 | ScienceNOW

DOE's One-Night Standard

by David Malakoff

One night of passion with that seductive foreigner you can keep to yourself, but two and you've got to tell--even if you can't remember their name. That is the gist...

31 August 1999 | ScienceNOW

Cornerstone of Internet Security Cracked

by Alexander Hellemans

A popular encryption tool for keeping credit card numbers and other information secret on the Internet has been cracked. Last week, scientists announced at a press conference in Amsterdam that...

30 August 1999 | ScienceNOW

Evolving Toy Story

by Dana Mackenzie

Few people over the age of six would think of Lego construction toys as the building blocks of life. But now two scientists have shown that it is possible to...

30 August 1999 | ScienceNOW

Insulin Itself May Cause Diabetes

by Elizabeth Norton Lasley

Scientists have come a step closer to understanding the cause of childhood diabetes, a disease in which the body's immune system destroys its own insulin-producing cells. A paper in the...

30 August 1999 | ScienceNOW

Spin Doctor

by Science News Staff

Today is the birthday of The Svedberg, a Swedish chemist who invented the ultracentrifuge, an instrument used to determine the weight of proteins. Svedberg, who was born in 1884, studied...

27 August 1999 | ScienceNOW

A Fertile Chemist

by Science News Staff

Today is the birthday of Karl Bosch, a German chemist born in 1874 whose research led to industrial production of chemical fertilizers and explosives. Building on the work of chemist...

27 August 1999 | ScienceNOW

Woods Hole Geologist Dies in Outing

by Jeffrey Mervis

Charles Hollister, a senior scientist and administrator at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Massachusetts, died Monday from a fall while hiking in Wyoming with his family. He was...

27 August 1999 | ScienceNOW

Lean Mice Have Youthful Cells

by Gretchen Vogel

Mice on a strict diet not only live longer than well-fed animals, but they also appear to flex muscles whose cells behave much younger than their age. The findings, reported...

26 August 1999 | ScienceNOW

Kenyan Skeleton Shakes Ape Family Tree

by Carl Zimmer

The fossil remains of an ape, described in tomorrow's issue of Science, shine new light on an extremely murky phase of ape evolution and force researchers to reexamine the family...

26 August 1999 | ScienceNOW

Ribosome Begins to Unravel

by Elizabeth Pennisi

Scientists had long thought that unraveling the structure of the ribosome, the cell's protein factory, would be as hard as climbing Mount Everest. A conglomerate of some 54 different proteins...

26 August 1999 | ScienceNOW

First Chandra Images Elate Astronomers

by Govert Schilling

Only 5 weeks have passed since Chandra, NASA's new x-ray observatory, was launched, and already it may have found the youngest known neutron star--the corpse of a dead star--in the...

25 August 1999 | ScienceNOW

Canadians Find "Ice Man" in Glacier

by Constance Holden

Canada now has its own "ice man." On 14 August, mountain-sheep hunters found a frozen human body, dressed in fur and accompanied by tools and a food pouch, in a...

25 August 1999 | ScienceNOW

Pediatrician and Polio Pioneer

by Science News Staff

Today is the 83rd birthday of Frederick Chapman Robbins, an American pediatrician and virologist who played an important role in the development of the polio vaccine. After investigating viral epidemics...

25 August 1999 | ScienceNOW

Smooth Spot Found for Mars Polar Lander

by Govert Schilling

The view is nothing special at the landing site of the Mars Polar Lander, but scientists hope the geology will make up for it. Exactly 100 days from today, on...

25 August 1999 | ScienceNOW

A Puzzling Pulsar

by Alexander Hellemans

A discovery by Australian scientists will force astronomers to rethink their models of pulsars, tiny stars that fling radio beams into the universe as they spin. In this week's Nature,...

24 August 1999 | ScienceNOW

Hungry Minnow Run Amok?

by David Malakoff

A hungry minnow let loose to eat mosquitoes appears to be munching on some dwindling amphibians, too. Introduced mosquito fish are threatening California treefrogs, researchers report in this month's Conservation...

24 August 1999 | ScienceNOW

Brain Research in the Womb

by Constance Holden

Brain scientists may have a new window into an unborn child's mind. Researchers have shown that functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)--an imaging technology that has sprouted only in the past...

24 August 1999 | ScienceNOW

Bees Do It Best

by Dana Mackenzie

Honey may be sweet, but honeybees' engineering is even sweeter. A mathematician has proved that a comb's hexagonal lattice allows bees to store the most honey for the least amount...

23 August 1999 | ScienceNOW

New Role Found for the Hippocampus

by Laura Helmuth

When you remember a friend or your first day of work, you're fully aware of what you're remembering. But memory has another guise: nonconscious skills like riding a bicycle or...

23 August 1999 | ScienceNOW

Two Stars Are Born

by Dennis Normile

A pair of embryonic stars, swaddled in gas and dust, emit parallel jets in this image from Japan's new 8.3-meter Subaru Telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. Material is still...

23 August 1999 | ScienceNOW

Former Rockefeller President to Head HFSP

by Alexander Hellemans

Torsten Wiesel, a Nobel laureate and former president of The Rockefeller University in New York City, has been selected to lead the Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP), an international effort...

20 August 1999 | ScienceNOW

Russian Rocket Revolutionary

by Science News Staff

Soviet rocket scientist Valentin Petrovich Glushko was born on this day in 1908. Glushko worked with renowned rocket designer Sergey Korolyov from 1932 to 1966. The two had a triumphant...

20 August 1999 | ScienceNOW

Drought Drove Mexican Bird Species Apart

by Bernice Wuethrich

Researchers have found new proof for the theory that natural barriers, such as mountain ranges or dry areas, can cause the birth of new animal and plant species. In a...

20 August 1999 | ScienceNOW

A Westward Trail of Death

by Tim Appenzeller

The magnitude 7.4 earthquake that struck northwestern Turkey in the early hours of 17 August, killing over 10,000 people, caught almost everybody by surprise--except seismologists. Although they made no predictions...

19 August 1999 | ScienceNOW

A Catalog of Stars

by Science News Staff

Today is the birthday of John Flamsteed, an English astronomer born in 1646 who produced important star catalogs. As the first Astronomer Royal at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, he...

19 August 1999 | ScienceNOW

Macho Mouse No More

by Elizabeth Norton Lasley

What makes some males form lasting relationships, while others are promiscuous and irresponsible? The answer may lie, at least in part, in the way the brain responds to a hormone...

19 August 1999 | ScienceNOW

Sharp Drop Seen in Soil Erosion Rates

by James Glanz

A controversial paper published in tomorrow's issue of Science (20 August, p. 1244) calls into question the widespread notion that modern farming practices in the United States are causing massive...

18 August 1999 | ScienceNOW

Can a Retrovirus Cause Breast Cancer?

by Michael Hagmann

A virus that made the human genome its permanent residence long ago may be an important cause of breast cancer, if a study presented last week at a virology conference...

18 August 1999 | ScienceNOW

Protecting the Eye From Pressure

by Kevin Boyd

Blocking the activity of a single enzyme can nearly halt the nerve damage caused by glaucoma in mice, according to a paper in the current issue of the Proceedings of...

18 August 1999 | ScienceNOW

Beetles With a Deadly Aim

by Menno Schilthuizen

Bombardier beetles are the gunslingers of the insect world. For centuries, these insects have been known for the explosive, boiling-hot discharges they release when harassed. Now it turns out that...

17 August 1999 | ScienceNOW

Old Stars Have Planets for Lunch

by Mark Sincell

Imagine planet Earth and everything on it being swallowed and burned by the sun. Not a pretty prospect, but it's probably the eventual fate of all planets, including our own,...

17 August 1999 | ScienceNOW

Tuberculosis Is Still Spreading

by Bradley Keoun

Health officials appear to be making some progress in saving the lives of those with tuberculosis (TB), which remains one of the worst global public health threats. A new study...

17 August 1999 | ScienceNOW

Data Rule, Round Two

by Jocelyn Kaiser

Scientific groups seem to be pleased with the White House's latest version of a proposal that would require researchers to give the public access to raw data that federal agencies...

17 August 1999 | ScienceNOW

Fraud Finding Triggers Payback Demand

by Marcia Barinaga and Jocelyn Kaiser

Officials at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) in California thought they were setting a positive example when they exposed allegedly fraudulent research conducted by one of their scientists. Now they...

16 August 1999 | ScienceNOW

Dissecting a Virus

by Science News Staff

Today is the birthday of Wendell Stanley, an American biochemist born in 1904 who pioneered the study of viruses. In 1935 at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research (now Rockefeller...

16 August 1999 | ScienceNOW

Falling Crime Rates Linked to Abortions

by Constance Holden

A pair of crime researchers kicked up some dust last week when newspapers reported their study arguing that the legalization of abortion has had a large role in the sudden...

16 August 1999 | ScienceNOW

The Genes Behind Septic Shock

by Gretchen Vogel

For most people, an infection with the bacteria Nisseria meningitidis means nothing more than a dose of antibiotics and a few days of headache and malaise. But in some patients,...

16 August 1999 | ScienceNOW

Astronomers Find Planet With Two Suns

by Mark Sincell

Astronomers have uncovered the first evidence of a planet orbiting two stars at once. If confirmed by other researchers, the planet would not just be an astronomical novelty; Its detection,...

13 August 1999 | ScienceNOW

Warm Reception for Chili Idea

by Jocelyn Kaiser

SPOKANE, WASHINGTON--From red-hot chicken wings to kimchi, many spicy foods get their sinus-clearing zing from hot peppers. For some ecologists, chili peppers have posed a burning question: Why are they...

August 1999 Archives

Recent Articles

Categories