December 1999 Archives

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10 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

Sorting Stars

by Science News Staff

Annie Jump Cannon, who established astronomy's system for classifying different types of stars, was born on 11 December 1863. The American studied physics at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, then worked...

10 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

European X-ray Observer Launched

by Alexander Hellemans

To the relief and delight of engineers and x-ray astronomers, Europe's new space workhorse, the Ariane 5, today deposited a $640 million x-ray observatory into orbit. If all goes well,...

9 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

Life at the Bottom

by Dana Mackenzie

Biologists have found living bacteria at the bottom of the deepest ice core ever drilled. The discovery gives a first glimpse of how life may have survived in an ecosystem...

9 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

Researchers Defend Deadly Gene Trial

by Eliot Marshall

BETHESDA, MARYLAND--Doctors and scientists from the University of Pennsylvania today defended their clinical judgment in the case of Jesse Gelsinger, an 18-year-old who died on 17 September while receiving experimental...

9 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

No Evidence for Sperm Wars

by Michael Hagmann

Remember that '60s refrain, "Make love, not war"? For sperm, some scientists say, love and war are one and the same. According to the so-called kamikaze sperm hypothesis, sperm from...

8 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

Untangling the Story of Tau

by Gretchen Vogel

Two unmistakable signs of Alzheimer's disease are the so-called plaques and tangles in a victim's brain. Scientists have a good handle on how plaques form. The tangles have been more...

8 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

Shaking Up a Nursery of Giant Planets

by Richard A. Kerr

What are Uranus and Neptune doing so far from the sun? The question has puzzled theorists for decades. According to a new model, sibling rivalry might be to blame for...

8 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

Unraveling Ribozymes

by Science News Staff

Today is the 52nd birthday of Thomas Cech, a biochemist who helped discover catalytic RNA. In the process, Cech and his colleagues overturned conventional wisdom about the interactions between DNA,...

7 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

Language Lessons

by Science News Staff

Today is the 71st birthday of Noam Chomsky, considered by many to be the most influential linguist of the 20th century. Chomsky revolutionized the field of theoretical linguistics in 1957...

7 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

Chasing Sprites

by Jocelyn Kaiser

Watching a summer lightning storm from your porch can be a thrill, but above the thunder clouds, mostly out of sight, a show of Olympic proportions sometimes takes place: Gigantic...

7 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

Stem Cells Muscle in on Bloodstream

by Gretchen Vogel

Once a muscle cell, always a muscle cell--or so scientists used to think. But they were wrong. Stem cells found in muscle can take up residence in bone marrow and...

6 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

Inscrutable Atoms

by Science News Staff

Yesterday would have been the 98th birthday of Werner Heisenberg, a German physicist who founded the field of quantum mechanics. In 1925, Heisenberg came up with the first precise mathematical...

6 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

Science Fairs Pump Up the Rewards of Talent

by Laura Helmuth

If you can't run the nation's most prestigious high school science contest, start your own--and make it even more lucrative for the winners. That's the genesis of the Siemens Westinghouse...

6 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

Martian Gremlin Claims New Victim

by Richard A. Kerr

NASA has all but given up on the Mars Polar Lander, which descended into the Martian atmosphere on Friday but hasn't been heard from since. Space scientists say they may...

3 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

Aliens From Inner Space

by Jocelyn Kaiser

This mug is the business end of a tapeworm, a parasite that infects millions of people and countless animals worldwide. Up to 100 millimeters long, this species (Hymenolepsis microstoma) uses...

3 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

Damming a Cascade to Blindness

by Trisha Gura

Scientists may have found a novel way to block a chain of molecular signals that leads to the most common form of blindness. A compound that jams the receptor for...

3 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

Europe's No Zone for Ozone

by Science News Staff

Gently swirling stratospheric currents apparently swept open a minihole in the ozone layer over Western Europe on Tuesday, according to the European Space Agency. The weak winter sun leaking through...

2 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

New Glimpse Into Early Animal History

by Martin Enserink

A fossil site in southern China that has held paleontologists captivated for a decade keeps relinquishing new treasures. Only 4 weeks ago, a Chinese team reported the oldest known vertebrates...

2 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

Nanowire Made to Order

by Robert F. Service

BOSTON--Electrical switches the size of molecules could help shrink computer chips. But until now, researchers had no way to wire up components so small. At a meeting of the Materials...

2 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

Bone Boon From Cholesterol Drugs

by Gretchen Vogel

Drugs called statins, taken by tens of millions of people to lower their cholesterol, may be beneficial to bones as well. In tomorrow's Science, researchers report that statins trigger bone...

2 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

Will the Arctic Ocean Lose All Its Ice?

by Richard A. Kerr

The arctic ice pack is not only shrinking in area but rapidly thinning as well, according to reports in tomorrow's Science and the 15 December issue of Geophysical Research Letters....

1 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

Tuning In to the Keenest of Ears

by Science News Staff

Only one in 1200 people have perfect pitch, the ability to identify exactly what a particular note should sound like without reference to any other notes. Not surprisingly, a disproportionate...

1 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

Helium Beam's Gentle, Sensitive Touch

by Andrew Watson

A microscope with unprecedented sensitivity, based on a beam of atoms rather than a standard setup using light or electrons, is one step closer to reality. Researchers have coaxed helium...

1 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

NIH Opens Door to Stem Cell Research

by Gretchen Vogel

The federal government moved a step closer to funding research on some human stem cells today, when the National Institutes of Health (NIH) released draft guidelines covering the controversial research....

1 December 1999 | ScienceNOW

First Human Chromosome Finished

by Elizabeth Pennisi

22 down, 22 to go: Scientists announced today that they have finished sequencing nearly an entire human chromosome. Although chromosome 22 is the second smallest, the accomplishment helps set a...