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February 2000 Archives

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29 February 2000 | ScienceNOW

Science and Religion Mediator Dies

by Cassio Leite Vieira
A Brazilian biophysicist who helped resolve contentious debates--both past and present--between science and religion died 16 February. Carlos Chagas Filho was a key negotiator in recent disputes about the authenticity...
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29 February 2000 | ScienceNOW

Engineering's Greatest Hits

by Constance Holden
The announcement may not electrify the world, but engineers say stringing up the world's power grid ranked as the most beneficial engineering achievement of the 20th century. Members of the...
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29 February 2000 | ScienceNOW

Newborn Neurons Might Learn Scents

by Reto Kohler
The brain's olfactory bulb lets you savor the wafting odors of the cappuccino in the classroom next door. Researchers suspect that the bulb may also send a mental alert when...
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29 February 2000 | ScienceNOW

Dark Matter, or Murky Data?

by Adrian Cho
A group of physicists claims to have identified dark matter, the shadowy stuff thought to account for 90% of the universe's mass. Announced Friday at the Fourth International Symposium on...
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28 February 2000 | ScienceNOW

Panel Urges Boost for Global Health

by Martin Enserink
How can the pharmaceutical industry be enticed to make drugs and vaccines for infectious diseases that sicken or kill billions of people worldwide, yet offer little in the way of...
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28 February 2000 | ScienceNOW

MIT Gets Big Brain-Research Donation

by David Malakoff
In one of the largest gifts ever to a U.S. university, a high-tech couple will give $350 million to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to found a new brain...
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28 February 2000 | ScienceNOW

Kitt Peak Telescope to Close

by Mark Muro
TUCSON, ARIZONA--Astronomers are upset over a decision to mothball a pioneering millimeter-wavelength telescope on Kitt Peak in southern Arizona. A planned replacement scope won't be ready for years, and astronomers...
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28 February 2000 | ScienceNOW

Big Boost for Yale Medical School

by Constance Holden
A month after announcing a planned $500 million for upgrading its science and engineering programs (Science, 28 January, p. 579), Yale University said last week that it will pour another...
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28 February 2000 | ScienceNOW

And Now, the Ecological Forecast

by Jocelyn Kaiser
WASHINGTON, D.C.--The risk of rising seas and dried-up crops from global warming has gotten headlines for years. But lower profile environmental threats also loom on the horizon. On 20 February,...
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25 February 2000 | ScienceNOW

Nice Part-Time Work, If You Can Get It

by Dana Mackenzie
WASHINGTON, D.C.--Many people dream of taking a part-time job and spending more time at home. For most, the double whammy of lower income and no fringe benefits keeps their nose...
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25 February 2000 | ScienceNOW

Physicists Wary of Science-Religion Dialogue

by Constance Holden
Last week saw a clash of cultures within the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS, publisher of ScienceNOW). At the 20 February meeting of the AAAS council, members...
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25 February 2000 | ScienceNOW

Algal Lotion Soothes Sunburn

by Michael Hagmann
It may not sound as appealing as Coppertone, but an alga may help prevent skin cancer. A report in the 15 February issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy...
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25 February 2000 | ScienceNOW

Vaccine Strategy for Stroke Damage

by Laura Helmuth
When it's healthy, the brain protects itself from the riffraff that circulates in the bloodstream by means of a guard membrane. This so-called blood-brain barrier keeps out uninvited guests--until a...
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25 February 2000 | ScienceNOW

Going Deep for an Unearthly Microbe

by Elizabeth Pennisi
WASHINGTON, D.C.--Even though the late Carl Sagan had his eyes on deep space, his soon-to-be namesake comes from a different deep place: beneath the sea floor. Microbiologist John Baross and...
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24 February 2000 | ScienceNOW

Pluto to the Doghouse

by Richard A. Kerr
After dodging exile from the family of planets last year, tiny Pluto suddenly finds itself deprived of its planethood by a leading astronomical institution, New York's Hayden Planetarium. Last year...
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24 February 2000 | ScienceNOW

The Brains Behind the Face

by Gretchen Vogel
WASHINGTON, D.C.--Beauty ads claim that retinoic acid, better known as vitamin A, removes wrinkles from aging faces. But a new study suggests that it is even more important for very...
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24 February 2000 | ScienceNOW

Silk Genes Reveal Flexible Design

by Erik Stokstad
With seven kinds of silk, many spiders weave complex and resilient works of art. Now, the most extensive look yet at spider silk DNA reveals that the gene for a...
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24 February 2000 | ScienceNOW

An Astronomical Hat Dance

by Charles Seife
It's a hat dance on a galactic scale: The spectacular Sombrero galaxy has been caught mid-swirl by a Chilean telescope. The spiral galaxy, about 50 million light-years away, is almost...
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23 February 2000 | ScienceNOW

Where the Hurricane Blows

by Robert Irion
WASHINGTON, D.C.--When the weather turns hot and sticky, hurricanes force thousands of Americans to batten down their hatches. Some storms ravage states along the Gulf of Mexico, while others menace...
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23 February 2000 | ScienceNOW

Nicotine May Help Tourette's Patients

by Elizabeth Pennisi
WASHINGTON, D.C.--A little nicotine may go a long way toward improving the lives of people with a disease called Tourette's syndrome. Small doses of nicotine can boost the effect of...
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23 February 2000 | ScienceNOW

Patent on HIV Receptor Provokes an Outcry

by Eliot Marshall
Academic scientists are stewing about a recently issued patent that gives a private company the rights to CCR5, a human gene that plays a key role in HIV infection. The...
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22 February 2000 | ScienceNOW

The Brain's Special Places

by Constance Holden
WASHINGTON, D.C.--Is a part of the brain reserved especially for recognizing locations, such as rooms, streets, and landscapes? Yes, suggests a study presented here on 18 February at the annual...
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22 February 2000 | ScienceNOW

Martian Tire Tracks Explained

by Andrew Lawler
WASHINGTON, D.C.--Researchers have discovered what causes the dark, mostly straight streaks that adorn the plains of Mars. "We caught a dust devil in action," whipped up by the fierce martian...
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22 February 2000 | ScienceNOW

Power From Pond Scum

by Jocelyn Kaiser
WASHINGTON, D.C.--Suppose you could fuel up your car by dipping a hose into your garden pond. That's roughly the idea behind a decades-old dream of using algae to split water...
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22 February 2000 | ScienceNOW

New Detector Finds Buried Mines

by Adrian Cho
WASHINGTON, D.C.--A prototype detector akin to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines used in medicine has successfully ferreted out buried landmines, Pentagon researchers announced today at the meeting of the American...
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18 February 2000 | ScienceNOW

Hubble Spies a Ring of Fire

by Alexander Hellemans
The Hubble Space Telescope has taken a close-up look at a strange event in the aftermath of a supernova: the sudden brightening of a huge gas ring that circles the...
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18 February 2000 | ScienceNOW

The Harm in Homocysteine

by Eliot Marshall
WASHINGTON, D.C.--Doctors have known for decades about a rare metabolic disorder that boosts blood levels of an amino acid called homocysteine, causing mental retardation in severely affected children and early...
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18 February 2000 | ScienceNOW

Fruit Fly Genome Finished

by Elizabeth Pennisi
WASHINGTON, D.C.--The humble fruit fly has taken the lead in the genome race. Using an approach that was publicly trounced less than 2 years ago, a public-private collaboration has practically...
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18 February 2000 | ScienceNOW

Suicide Prevention to Treat MS?

by Reto Kohler
Cellular suicide may play an important role in multiple sclerosis (MS), a new study has shown. By equipping mice with an enzyme that prevents this kind of suicide, researchers slowed...
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17 February 2000 | ScienceNOW

Genetic Trick to Rejuvenate Livers

by Michael Hagmann
Some 20 million people in the United States alone suffer from liver diseases, and more than 40,000 of them die each year. Liver transplants could save many of those lives,...
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17 February 2000 | ScienceNOW

Photons: Buy One, Get Three Free

by Adrian Cho
In a bargain your coupon-clipping aunt would love, researchers have discovered a way to get four times as much light from state-of-the-art light emitting diodes (LEDs) for the same amount...
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17 February 2000 | ScienceNOW

Eros Appears Battered But Unbroken

by Richard A. Kerr
WASHINGTON, D.C.--The asteroid Eros has taken a heavier beating in its lifetime than expected, but it appears to have remained intact, scientists told a press conference here today. The heavily...
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16 February 2000 | ScienceNOW

How the Moon Found Its Orbit

by Govert Schilling
The most popular theory about how the moon formed--as a result of an apocalyptic collision between Earth and another object--always seemed to have a fatal flaw: It couldn't explain the...
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16 February 2000 | ScienceNOW

Eugenics Archive: Lessons From the Past

by Jocelyn Kaiser
Scientists debate the existence of a genetic predisposition for crime, while brainy women peddle their eggs: It's not hard to find recent examples of ethical questions raised by modern genetics....
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16 February 2000 | ScienceNOW

Immortality for Sale

by Erik Stokstad
Wondering what to get the stargazer who has everything? For just $3000, the University of Arizona will put your loved one's name on a mirror of the Large Binocular Telescope...
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16 February 2000 | ScienceNOW

RNA Works Out Knight Moves

by Charles Seife
Silicon upstarts aside, the best chess computers are biological--the brain of grand master Gary Kasparov, for example. Now a team of scientists at Princeton University has solved a chess problem...
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15 February 2000 | ScienceNOW

Some Organisms Tidy Up Their Genomes

by Anna Davison
The vast scope of the human genome project may seem overwhelming, but compared to some other creatures, we really don't have all that much DNA. Even the lowly, single-celled amoeba...
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15 February 2000 | ScienceNOW

A Bug a Day Keeps Allergies Away

by Michael Hagmann
Asthma and allergies are on the rise in developed countries, and a counterintuitive theory suggests that germs are to blame--not too many germs, but not too few. Now, as reported...
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15 February 2000 | ScienceNOW

New Material Chills Via Electric Current

by Adrian Cho
A moth frying on a bug lamp proves, suicidally, that an electrical current generates heat. But a current can also cool, if it runs through the right stuff. Electrons carry...
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14 February 2000 | ScienceNOW

Frozen DNA of the Forebears

by Erik Stokstad
Like humans, brown bears are thought to have migrated from Eurasia across a temporary land bridge and then spread out across North America. Genetic research on living bears suggested that...
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