January 2000 Archives

31 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Biotech Treaty Finally Agreed Upon

by Laura Helmuth

After 5 years of bitter negotiations, delegates from 130 countries finally hammered out a global treaty that will govern the trade of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The treaty formalizes the...

31 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

President Hands Out Science, Technology Medals

by David Malakoff

Researchers who plumbed the depths of the Antarctic ozone hole, helped show that modern cells are assembled from once independent life-forms, and created reading machines for the blind were among...

31 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Gene Silencer Linked to Cancer

by Elizabeth Pennisi

Radiation or toxic chemicals can unleash cancer by destroying or damaging the genes that control cell growth. Now it seems that these critical checkpoints are vulnerable to another kind of...

28 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Tumor Cells Break Free at Snail's Pace

by Laura Helmuth

The deadliest tumors seed the body with sloughed cells, which can take root and form new tumors. Researchers have now identified a family of proteins, called Snail, that helps cancer...

28 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Debut of the Nano-Sniffers

by Dana Mackenzie

Physicists have taken a step toward the ultimate miniature chemical sensors. A single carbon nanotube about two billionths of a meter wide can compete with the best materials of today...

28 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Appetite Hormone Weakens Bones

by Trisha Gura

The fat-busting hormone leptin curbs the appetite and sends preteens lurching into puberty. Now comes news of a more surprising connection: osteoporosis. Researchers report in the current issue of Cell...

27 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

The Elements Were His Element

by Science News Staff

Victor Goldschmidt, the father of modern geochemistry, was born on this day in 1888. A Swiss-born Norwegian chemist, Goldschmidt was fascinated by the elements, their origins, and their relationships in...

27 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

The Body Plan of Modern Life

by Elizabeth Pennisi

Although they look like blobs, sea anemones and other cnidarians have a basic anatomical plan called a body axis. That is, they have a top, defined by the mouth, and...

27 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Discovering the Original Emerald Cities

by Erik Stokstad

A kind of atomic birth certificate can peg where emeralds were grubbed from the ground, geologists report in tomorrow's issue of Science. The technique might help dealers authenticate top-quality stones,...

27 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Fake Prion Can Infect Yeast

by Michael Balter

Scientists have created an artificial prion, a type of protein whose misshapen version is implicated as the cause of several fatal and infectious conditions, including "mad cow disease" and human...

26 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Analyzing the Erdös Star Cluster

by Charles Seife

Just as actors have Kevin Bacon, mathematicians have Paul Erdös. People in each field love to calculate their "degree of separation" from co-stars or co-authors. Now two Erdös fans have...

26 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Discerning Taste

by Michael Hagmann

Scientists have for the first time found a protein on the tongue that allows us to taste our food. The finding, reported in the February Nature Neuroscience, means that gourmets...

26 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Start of the Nuclear Era

by Science News Staff

Today marks the 60th anniversary of one of the most remarkable--and certainly one of the most fateful--scientific achievements of the 20th century: nuclear fission. Renowned physicist Niels Bohr announced at...

26 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

No Holds Barred

by Jon Cohen

Researchers are planning to debate a controversial theory on the origin of AIDS. The United Kingdom's Royal Society will host a meeting in London in May to explore the contentious...

25 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Chilling Out in Germany

by Robert Koenig

The last recourse you might consider for severe arthritis would be stepping half-naked into a freezer cold enough to bring on frostbite within minutes. But a growing number of Germans--not...

25 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Art Paleo

by Science News Staff

To the delight of archaeologists and laypeople alike, our ancestors have been driven to doodle for at least 30,000 years. From charcoal drawings of woolly rhinos locking horns by Ice...

25 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Company Gets Rights to Cloned Human Embryos

by Gretchen Vogel

A U.S. company has received two British patents that appear to grant it commercial rights to human embryos created by cloning. The precedent-setting patents, issued last week on the cloning...

24 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Longer Life for Bypass Grafts?

by Adrian Cho

A two-fisted protein slows the clogging of veins grafted into pig arteries. The finding, reported in tomorrow's Circulation, raises the prospect of gene therapy that could help people who've had...

24 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Butterfly's Genetic Brushwork

by Elizabeth Pennisi

In a feat of versatility, nature long ago co-opted the genes for wing development in butterflies to paint a giant eyespot that helps confuse predators. But that's not the end...

24 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Helping Plants Beat the Heat

by Anna Davison

Scientists have engineered tobacco plants to thrive in heat that would wilt the hardiest strains alive today. The technique, described in the current issue of Science, could someday be used...

24 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Blue-Blood Semiconductors on Low-Rent Silicon

by Robert F. Service

Researchers trying to coax light from semiconductors have a case of the blues, but they couldn't be happier. A team has found a better way to build blue light-emitting diodes...

21 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

NIH Cuts Mouse Deal

by Eliot Marshall

A new agreement cuts away some of the red tape snarling cancer research. The policy, announced by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on 19 January, allows NIH-funded scientists doing...

21 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Pedagogy First, Technology Later

by Laura Helmuth

Faculty members can get their hackles up when they see administrators trying to force online instruction into the curriculum. At the University of Washington, Seattle, 2 years ago, 900 professors...

21 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Electric Crystals That Really Swing

by Mark Sincell

The speakers and microphones in modern telephones depend on tiny crystals that change electricity into sound and vice-versa. A computer model of these crystal's molecular structure, reported in the current...

21 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Topsy-Turvy Times for Ancient Earth?

by Richard A. Kerr

Tectonic plates ceaselessly carry continents around the world, but never faster than about 10 centimeters a year. Now comes evidence of a shift 10 times more rapid: 84 million years...

20 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Patching Into the Spinal Cord

by Adrian Cho

When treated with the right proteins, severed nerves will sink new roots into the spinal cord. In experiments described in today's Nature, rats regained their senses of heat and pressure...

20 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Maladies of Nerve and Muscle

by Mitch Leslie

Diseases like multiple sclerosis and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) often erode nerves for years before paralyzing or even killing their victims. Providing the latest information on these slow-burn diseases is...

20 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Scientists Issue Plea for Peers in Clinics

by Eliot Marshall

WASHINGTON, D.C.--Scientists who also practice medicine are becoming an "endangered species," a group of bench researchers said yesterday. The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) called upon the...

20 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

How Rotavirus Causes Diarrhea

by Ingrid Wickelgren

Rotavirus kills some 600,000 children worldwide, particularly in the developing world. Scientists have long known how the virus takes its toll: It causes the intestine to secrete copious amounts of...

19 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Swiss Opt for Lighter GMO Regulation

by Robert Koenig

BERN--Biotech researchers breathed a sigh of relief today after Switzerland's cabinet, the Federal Council, rejected a hotly debated proposal for a moratorium on releases of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) into...

19 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

A Bigger Bang

by Robert F. Service

Alfred Nobel made his fortune by stabilizing nitroglycerine, creating an explosive paste that he patented as dynamite. The industrialist and founder of the prize that bears his name would no...

19 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Right, Wrong, and Shades of Gray

by Jocelyn Kaiser

Whose name goes where on a paper? What's it like to serve as an expert witness in a courtroom? Ethical issues such as these inevitably will rear up--and potentially bite...

19 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Chimp Deaths Spark Negligence Charges

by Gretchen Vogel

Troubles continue at the Coulston Foundation, the country's largest primate research facility. According to allegations made in the last week by In Defense of Animals (IDA), an animal rights group,...

18 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

No Blubber About Blubber

by Elizabeth Pennisi

Dolphins, whales, and other marine mammals keep warm with a thick layer of fat under their skin. This blubber also improves their buoyancy. Now, studies of trained dolphins suggest an...

18 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Gamma Ray Satellite Faces Premature End

by Govert Schilling

NASA may soon deliberately crash a scientific satellite into the ocean. The reason? If it doesn't send its highly successful Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (CGRO) into a directed suicidal dive...

18 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Lots of Clutter? Doesn't Matter

by Dana Mackenzie

Is your office a jumble of filing cabinets, furniture, and piles of old magazines? That's okay--at least as far as the hottest technology in wireless communication is concerned. Researchers have...

18 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Getting Prions Back in Shape

by Michael Hagmann

A piece of protein injected into mice can delay the onset of a lethal brain disease. The finding, reported in the current Lancet, raises hopes for a treatment for Creutzfeldt-Jacob...

14 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Spotting Bad Seeds

by Constance Holden

A few youngsters start a career of antisocial behavior early in life--destroying property, being cruel to animals, or getting booted out of grade school for fighting. At least some troublemakers,...

14 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Color Vision Revisited

by Michael Hagmann

While it may be a travesty to colorize Man Ray's classic black-and-white photos, imagine trying to appreciate the work of Jackson Pollock or Piet Mondrian without the benefit of color...

14 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Playing the Odds as a Newt

by Elizabeth Pennisi

A male slithers into a bar looking for a date. He spies a female surrounded by three suitors. What should he do? Well, if he's a red-spotted newt, he'll back...

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