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January 2000 Archives

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14 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Messengers From Earth's Nether World

by Richard A. Kerr
SAN FRANCISCO--Researchers probing Earth's deep interior are celebrating what could be a startling new find: fresh, seemingly unaltered minerals from hundreds of kilometers deeper than any found before. The rocks,...
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13 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Moving and Shaking on Mars

by Richard A. Kerr
SAN FRANCISCO--Scientists have discovered the first solid evidence that plate tectonics are not unique to Earth. New data suggest that parts of Mars, too, may have been shaped by plate...
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13 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

The Problem With Plutonium

by Mark Sincell
Scientists have long believed that solid plutonium dioxide (PuO2), a compound used in nuclear reactors and warheads, is the most stable form of plutonium. But in tomorrow's Science, a new...
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13 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Black Holes Popping Up All Over

by Robert Irion
ATLANTA--From the fringes of the universe to nearby parts of our own galaxy, black holes are becoming more than bit players on the cosmic stage. Several findings released here today...
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13 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Chandra Solves X-ray Riddle

by Govert Schilling
ATLANTA--For 40 years, astronomers have been baffled by a faint glow of x-rays lighting up the entire sky. Now they think they have solved the mystery of the glow's origins....
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13 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

One Physicist's Sense of Snow

by Science News Staff
In these winter months when people long for snow or begin to loathe it, what better Web excursion than a quick slide into the world of snowflakes, more properly known...
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12 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Step Closer to RNA World

by Gretchen Vogel
In life as we know it, proteins are the workhorses of the cell, and the recipes on how to produce them are stored in DNA and RNA. But before the...
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12 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Have Life, Will Travel

by Govert Schilling
ATLANTA--Scientists have long been fascinated by the idea that the first life-forms on Earth could have been deposited on our planet after arising somewhere else in the solar system. New...
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12 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Odds of Doomsday Rock Diminish

by Mark Sincell
Chances that life on Earth will be blighted by an asteroid strike are only half as high as previously assumed, according to a report in tomorrow's Nature. A new census...
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12 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

NSF to Receive Big Spending Boost

by Jeffrey Mervis
National Science Foundation (NSF) director Rita Colwell has an extra bounce in her step, the result of winning White House approval for a double-digit budget increase. Science has learned that...
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11 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Viral Culprit in Lou Gehrig's Disease?

by Laura Helmuth
New evidence implicates a virus in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the disease that killed baseball great Lou Gehrig and afflicts cosmologist Stephen Hawking. Researchers didn't catch the virus red-handed--they can't...
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11 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Ocean on Europa Looking Wetter and Wetter

by Richard A. Kerr
Squeezing yet more data out of an aging spacecraft, researchers announced yesterday that Galileo's close flyby of Jupiter's moon Europa last week has provided "very strong" evidence that an ocean...
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11 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Small Spark at National Ignition Facility

by Charles Seife
Managers of the half-built, overbudget National Ignition Facility (NIF) at last have something to smile about. An independent panel appointed to get the laser fusion project "back on track" (Science,...
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11 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

NINDS Director Rumored to Succeed Varmus

by Eliot Marshall
A new name tops the list of potential future directors of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Two high-level officials at different NIH institutes in Bethesda, Maryland, say that Gerald...
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11 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Dredging at Israeli Site Prompts Mudslinging

by Michael Balter
A prehistoric site critical for understanding early human evolution appears to have suffered permanent damage after a local Israeli drainage authority allegedly bulldozed a big chunk of it last month....
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10 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Birth of a Tantalizing Atom

by Charles Seife
Hoping to discover the origins of the rarest natural isotope, scientists have exposed the world's supply of tantalum-180 to conditions akin to those in dying stars. But the solution to...
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10 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Governor Proposes Institute on Hudson

by Laura Helmuth
New York Governor George Pataki has proposed a new institute devoted to river and estuary research. The Hudson River Institute, as it would be named, could become a "Woods Hole...
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10 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Human Genome 90% Done, Says Company

by Elizabeth Pennisi
Celera Genomics, a 20-month-old firm that aims to sequence the entire human genome, announced today that it now has 90% of the genome's 3.18 billion base pairs in its private...
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10 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Supernova Pumps Iron in Inside-Out Blast

by Robert Irion
Just in time for this week's opening of the big-screen thriller Supernova, astronomers have assembled a portrait of a real-life star in our galaxy that blew up 300 years ago....
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7 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

A Brief History of Hawking

by Science News Staff
Tomorrow is the 58th birthday of English theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, who is well known for his 1988 surprise best seller A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang...
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7 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Squabble Over Mammograms

by Laura Helmuth
A new analysis of old studies has sparked a debate over whether using mammograms to screen women for breast cancer saves lives. After examining eight published studies on the effectiveness...
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7 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Physicists Play (Superconducting) Ball

by Charles Seife
Scientists have observed yet another strange phenomenon caused by superconductivity, a state in which materials have lost all electrical resistance. When they applied an electrical field to a superconducting powder,...
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7 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Strange Ice Flavors on Pluto's Moon

by Robert Irion
Astronomers have taken their first detailed look at Pluto's companion Charon, the most distant known moon in the solar system. This dark body appears to be covered with a mixture...
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6 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Trapped by Lasers

by Science News Staff
The first scientist to use lasers to trap tiny spheres published his groundbreaking study 29 years ago this month. His research led to the development of "optical tweezers," laser-based devices...
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6 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Warming Up Wind Chill

by Charles Seife
The traditional method for calculating wind chill factor--the apparent temperature during frigid windy weather--may soon be blown away. How cold the air feels to our skin depends on both the...
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6 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Weather Written in the Stars

by Mark Sincell
If the Pleiades are bright in June, plant the potato crop soon; if they are faint and rise late, it's better to wait. Farmers in the Andes have followed this...
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6 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

The Unbuoyant Bubbles of Guinness

by Robert F. Service
Stuck in the lab waiting for your gels to run? Well, head down to your local pub, order a Guinness, and stare at the glass as the creamy brew settles....
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5 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Human Prion Protein Pictured

by Laura Helmuth
When twisted into abnormal shapes, short proteins called prions may cause a range of diseases that turn their victims' brains into something resembling a sponge before killing them. Now researchers...
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5 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

A Lethal Chain of Events

by Liese Greensfelder
A year and a half ago, hundreds of dead and dying sea lions washed ashore along the coast of Monterey Bay in central California. Now, scientists have determined what killed...
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5 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

U.K. Wakes Up to Asteroid Threat

by Helen Gavaghan
Spurred by pressure from lawmakers, the British government has established a three-person committee to study the risk of catastrophic asteroid impacts--and what the U.K. might do to help prevent them....
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5 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Critic Challenges MIT Women Report

by Constance Holden
Last March, a well-publicized report concluded that women faculty members at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) get disproportionately lower salaries and less lab space than their male colleagues (Science,...
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4 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Britain's Star Gravitational Attraction

by Science News Staff
Today is the birthday of Isaac Newton, the revered British physicist and mathematician. Born in 1642, Newton was the first to explain gravity and clearly define the nature of mass,...
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4 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Moon Mystery Solved?

by Charles Seife
When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's illusion ... and a point of contention for scientists. For decades, neuropsychologists have been arguing about what makes...
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4 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Healthier Chickens, Sicker People

by Laura Helmuth
Researchers have a new theory to explain why a particularly nasty strain of Salmonella has spread through U.S. and European poultry populations in the past 40 years, sickening millions of...
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4 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Faulty Education Makes T Cells Misbehave

by Michael Hagmann
Researchers have a new clue to what causes multiple sclerosis (MS), a disease in which the immune system destroys the protective sheath around nerve cells. A study in the January...
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3 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Academy Plans Guide to Improve Postdocs' Status

by Jeffrey Mervis
WASHINGTON, D.C.--"I'm taking a risk just being here. Missing a day of work could raise questions about my priorities." That frank statement from Daniel Zuckerman, a physiology postdoc at Johns...
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3 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

Zoology Naming Rules Eased

by Elizabeth Pennisi
While most of biology has kicked into hyperdrive, taxonomists pride themselves on keeping their research in line with work done decades, even centuries, ago. That means sticking with the principles...
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3 January 2000 | ScienceNOW

A Silky Revolution

by Gretchen Vogel
Genetically modified silk wasn't in vogue on fashion runways this season, but a designer strain of glow-in-the-dark silkworms suggests that such fabrics may soon be feasible. The fluorescent insects are...
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