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December 1999 Archives

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27 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

Looking Ahead: Sharper Focus

by Science News Staff
Cell gazers are anticipating more detailed looks at some of the major molecular complexes that make life possible. Using improved methods and machines, crystallographers may unveil the first high-resolution structure...
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27 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

Looking Ahead: Help Wanted

by Science News Staff
Some plum science policy jobs are open--but who will risk taking them in the last year of the lame-duck Clinton Administration? The answer might come this spring, once search committees...
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27 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

Looking Ahead: E-Publish or Perish?

by Science News Staff
Web-based scientific publishing will see some major roll-outs this year, as NIH test drives its controversial PubMed Central biomedical journal database and several players develop more preprint sites for posting...
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27 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

Looking Ahead: Science Under Siege

by Science News Staff
When security outfits in three former Soviet countries stepped up their activities in 1999, scientists paid the price. The Cold War games kicked into high gear last July, when Russian...
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27 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

Looking Ahead: Third Time Out

by Science News Staff
The Kyoto Treaty to stem global warming is frozen in political limbo in the United States, where the current Congress is likely to reject the pact--but that won't stop international...
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27 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

Looking Ahead: Getting Out the Vote

by Science News Staff
Cutting-edge science promises to be a 2000 election issue--but not in the way many researchers might hope. Antiabortion groups have put a high priority on banning taxpayer funding of promising...
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27 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

Looking Ahead: Genomaniacs

by Science News Staff
Researchers racing through a trio of high-profile genome sequencing efforts are likely to see some checkered flags soon. First across the finish line should be a complete picture of the...
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27 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

Looking Ahead

by Science News Staff
The future may be "made of the same stuff as the present," the French philosopher Simone Weil wrote in the 1940s, but time finds surprising ways to transform the familiar...
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23 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

Nickel for Your Thoughts

by Science News Staff
Today is the birthday of Axel Fredrik Cronstedt, a Swedish chemist born in 1722 who is best known for his discovery of nickel and his mineral classification scheme. In 1751,...
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23 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

Pop's Surprising Influence on Mom's DNA

by Evelyn Strauss
Women have struggled to gain equality in society, but biologists have long thought that females wield absolute power in a sphere far from the public eye: in the mitochondria, cellular...
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23 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

English Speakers: Slow on the Uptake

by Laura Helmuth
English is a peculiar language. Words such as "cough," "tough," "dough," and "bough" look like they ought to rhyme, but each one is pronounced differently. Italian, by contrast, translates letters...
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23 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

Bracing p53 for the War on Cancer

by Elizabeth Pennisi
Sometimes called the "guardian of the genome," a protein called p53 responds to DNA damage by either shutting down cell division or causing the cell to commit suicide. Either way,...
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22 December 1999 | 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...
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22 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

Internet and the Green Economy

by Jocelyn Kaiser
Feeling guilty about those hours you spent over the holidays shopping at dot com stores? Take solace in the thought that your online habits might help stave off global warming,...
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22 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

Radio Scope Gets New Lease on Life

by Michael Hagmann
Best known, perhaps, for first spotting a gravitational lens--the telltale starlight and radio waves bent by the gravity of a massive object--in 1979, Britain's aging Lovell radio telescope is about...
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21 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

Varmus's Last Dance

by Eliot Marshall
WASHINGTON, D.C.--Led by three institute chiefs, a band called "The Directors" performed last week at a send-off for outgoing NIH boss Harold Varmus, who's about to head off to Memorial...
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21 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

Forest Survives Customized Catastrophe

by Mari N. Jensen
A hurricane-wrecked forest may not look pretty, but it works. After partially uprooting trees in a pattern that mimicked severe storm damage, researchers found that more than three-quarters continued to...
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21 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

New NIH Rules Promote Sharing of Tools

by Eliot Marshall
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) last week released controversial new guidelines that set ground rules for sharing research tools. The goal is to increase access to new materials for...
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20 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

Putting the Tapeworm Together

by Science News Staff
The man who discovered the life cycle of tapeworms was born 19 December 1809. Belgian parasitologist Pierre-Joseph van Beneden, a professor of zoology at the Catholic University of Louvain in...
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20 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

Monsanto Merges, Spins Off Agritech

by Martin Enserink
Two powerhouses in the life sciences, U.S. Monsanto and U.S.-Swedish Pharmacia & Upjohn, yesterday announced that they plan to merge, creating a new pharmaceutical company with a market capitalization of...
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20 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

Mice Cloned From Cultured Stem Cells

by Gretchen Vogel
In an experiment that joins the booming fields of stem cells and cloning, scientists have managed to clone mice from embryonic stem cells. The report is the first demonstration that...
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17 December 1999 | 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...
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17 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

Y2K, the Molecule

by Robert F. Service
You've purged that old software from your C drive, tucked a few extra cans of baked beans into the cupboard, and maybe even stuffed some cash under the mattress. So...
17 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

Galileo Catches Lava Fountain on Io

by Robert Irion
SAN FRANCISCO--Astronomers are galvanized by a new image of what may be a curtain of lava spewing above a volcano on Jupiter's moon Io. The picture, snapped by the Galileo...
16 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

Taking the Measure of a Deadly Mountain

by Robert Irion
SAN FRANCISCO--New geologic research has exposed which parts of Washington state's dangerous Mount Rainier are most likely to collapse. The studies may help public safety officials improve plans for the...
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16 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

Gasoline Additive Lingers in Water Supplies

by Robert Irion
SAN FRANCISCO--The gasoline additive MTBE, intended to cleanse vehicle emissions of smog-producing crud, is fouling U.S. drinking water more seriously than researchers expected. New studies show that MTBE taints more...
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16 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

And the Runners-Up Are ...

by Science News Staff
In addition to the Breakthrough of the Year, Science recognizes nine additional major discoveries in fields that span the universe, from the edgy dance of subatomic particles to the biological...
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16 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

Stem Cells Named Breakthrough of the Year

by Gretchen Vogel
Science has honored stem cell research as its 1999 "Breakthrough of the Year." This year, scientists published more than a dozen landmark papers on the remarkable abilities of stem cells,...
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16 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

Splitting the Rent, Keeping the Peace

by Dana Mackenzie
It could be an episode on MTV's "The Real World": Four friends move into a house that has four rooms of different sizes. It doesn't seem fair for them all...
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15 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

Fielding Questions on Biotech Crops

by Jocelyn Kaiser
The often vitriolic debate over the risks and promise of genetically modified (GM) foods--are they "Frankenfoods" or a boon that will allow farmers to slash pesticide use?--has generated a flood...
15 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

On the Meteorite Trail

by Michael Balter
An intrepid Frenchwoman is skiing across virgin antarctic ice fields, looking for meteorites. On 22 November, Laurence de la Ferrière, 42, caught a lift to the South Pole, from which...
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15 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

Satellite Unveils a Black Aurora

by Robert Irion
SAN FRANCISCO--The luminous curtains of color that shimmer in the polar skies have dark companions, a satellite has revealed. As sheets of electrons cascade down into Earth's atmosphere to trigger...
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14 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

Faux Virus

by Science News Staff
Thirty-two 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...
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14 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

Cell Biologists Go Their Own Way

by Eliot Marshall
The American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB)--a small but aggressive group whose members include such scientific leaders as molecular biologists Harold Varmus and Bruce Alberts--has decided to strike out on...
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14 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

Nuclear Safety Violations Found at Toronto Labs

by Wayne Kondro
OTTAWA, CANADA--Citing violations of nuclear safety regulations, the government has blocked the use of radioisotopes for research at one of Canada's largest academic/medical hospital complexes. The action, taken on 2...
14 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

Charting the Shakes From Quakes

by Robert Irion
SAN FRANCISCO--For everyone who has wondered where to live to avoid getting rattled by an earthquake, a new map provides some hints. Today, earth scientists released the first global map...
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13 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

The Chemistry of Champagne Fizz

by Science News Staff
Raise a toast to William Henry, the British chemist. Born on December 12, 1774, Henry is best known for his studies of the solubility of gases in liquids. In work...
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13 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

Researcher Rebuked for 20-year-old Misconduct

by Michael Hagmann
MUNICH--The Max Planck Society, Germany's premier research organization, announced Monday that its president will issue a formal censure to neuroscientist Peter Seeburg, director of the Max Planck Institute for Medical...
13 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

Solar Wind Vanishes for a Day

by Robert Irion
SAN FRANCISCO--The solar wind, a steady gale of high-energy particles from the sun, died down to a mere zephyr for more than a day earlier this year. This sudden--and unexpected--pause...
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10 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

Nanotweezers for a Very Small Toolbox

by Mary Beckman
Researchers have developed the smallest pair of tweezers ever: a device that can manipulate particles as small as 10 nanometers across--less than the width of a virus--they report in today's...
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