March 2000 Archives

20 March 2000 | ScienceNOW

Iridium's Loss Is Astronomers' Gain

by David Malakoff

A spectacular business flop is evoking sweet sorrow among radio astronomers. The once high-flying Iridium mobile phone company last week announced that it had pulled the plug on its $5...

20 March 2000 | ScienceNOW

Random Packing Puts Mathematics in a Box

by Charles Seife

Anyone who's been on a crowded subway has unwillingly experienced random close packing. Mathematicians and physicists, on the other hand, relish a simple version of the crammed subway car. For...

17 March 2000 | ScienceNOW

Meteorite Science's Lucky Day

by Mark Sincell

HOUSTON, TEXAS--On 18 January, a 50-ton meteorite blazed across the early dawn sky above the southern Yukon. It was the size of city bus. Thousands of Canadians on their way...

17 March 2000 | ScienceNOW

Amateurs Help Solve the Gamma Ray Riddle

by Govert Schilling

Astronomy lovers can help the pros shed more light on gamma ray bursts, titanic explosions in the distant universe that cause short, intense bursts of gamma radiation. Earlier this month,...

17 March 2000 | ScienceNOW

Another Birdlike Dino Unveiled

by Constance Holden

Scientists have discovered what they claim to be a major piece in the puzzle of dinosaur-to-bird evolution: a cat-sized fossil that they call "the most birdlike dinosaur yet discovered." Its...

17 March 2000 | ScienceNOW

Thumbs Down for Controversial Pesticide

by Wendy Williams

A new pesticide which some scientists have likened to DDT will not be registered in the United States for use on cotton fields, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced Wednesday....

16 March 2000 | ScienceNOW

Using state-of-the-art imaging, a Johns Hopkins University team has identified a brain abnormality in male schizophrenics that could help explain why the disease looks different in men and women. Men...

16 March 2000 | ScienceNOW

Gene Silencer Shared by Many Organisms

by Elizabeth Pennisi

In backhanded ways, certain bits of DNA or RNA--a molecule that normally transmits a genetic message--can actually suppress a gene's information. Clues to how this happens have now been found...

16 March 2000 | ScienceNOW

New Book Finds One Nation, Many Species

by Jocelyn Kaiser

WASHINGTON, D.C.--Two conservation groups today released the most comprehensive look yet at the United States' creatures, plants, and habitats. From sea to shining sea (as well as Hawaii and Alaska),...

16 March 2000 | ScienceNOW

Distorted Galaxies Point to Dark Matter

by Adrian Cho

Never have so many astronomers been so eager to claim they can't see straight. Groups working with three different telescopes have detected weak lensing, a distortion of distant galaxies that...

15 March 2000 | ScienceNOW

Triple Stars May Do Crazy Eights

by Dana Mackenzie

Somewhere in the universe a trio of stars could be orbiting in a way Isaac Newton never dreamed of. Mathematicians have discovered a new choreography in which three stars trace...

15 March 2000 | ScienceNOW

Japan Gets Tough on Human Cloning

by Dennis Normile

TOKYO--Japan is preparing to outlaw human cloning by making it a crime that may result in prison sentences. A new bill, outlined recently by the Science and Technology Agency (STA)...

15 March 2000 | ScienceNOW

Animal Research: Celebrities Wanted

by Constance Holden

Medical research advocates are bemoaning their lack of star power when it comes to battling the animal rights movement. While the high-visibility People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)...

15 March 2000 | ScienceNOW

Spooky Particles Survive Einstein's Trap

by Charles Seife

The most unnerving idea in quantum mechanics may be "spooky action at a distance"--the notion that certain particles can affect one another almost instantly across vast reaches of space. Recently...

14 March 2000 | ScienceNOW

Physicists Create Funhouse Art

by Dana Mackenzie

Look in a funhouse mirror at a carnival, and your reflection is distorted into a goofy shape. The trick works in reverse too. A curved mirror can make a distorted...

14 March 2000 | ScienceNOW

Oxford Wins a Crown Synchrotron Jewel

by Michael Hagmann

In this tale of two cities, one rejoices while the other pines for what might have been. On 13 March U.K. science minister David Sainsbury announced that DIAMOND, an $880...

14 March 2000 | ScienceNOW

Cabbies' Brains Shaped by Driving

by Laura Helmuth

Taxi drivers in London are an elite bunch: The law requires them to memorize thousands of streets and places and know how best to navigate between them at a given...

14 March 2000 | ScienceNOW

Clinton Backs Rapid Release of Genome Data

by Eliot Marshall

It's not often that heads of state wade into a furious quarrel in the scientific community, but both President Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair did so this week....

13 March 2000 | ScienceNOW

Guinea Worm Banished From India

by Pallava Bagla

India has finally conquered Guinea worm, making it the second disease after smallpox to be fully eradicated from the country. The disease, which affects mainly the rural poor, is now...

13 March 2000 | ScienceNOW

New York's Deadly Virus May Stage Comeback

by Martin Enserink

Will it come back? That question has been haunting public health officials in New York City and state since a surprise outbreak of the West Nile virus sickened more than...

13 March 2000 | ScienceNOW

Extreme Home for Simple Organisms

by Elizabeth Pennisi

This bug is extreme, even for a class of organisms known as "extremophiles." While surveying the depths of an abandoned copper mine, a team of scientists has detected a microbe...

13 March 2000 | ScienceNOW

Cancer Researcher Sacked for Alleged Fraud

by Michael Hagmann

It seemed too good to be true: Where others had only disappointing results, Werner Bezwoda found that breast cancer patients, blitzed with drugs then given a bone marrow transplant, lived...

10 March 2000 | ScienceNOW

Alerting the Immune System to Tumors

by Oliver Baker

Tumors go mostly unmolested by the body's natural defenses, partly because cancer cells are descendents of normal body cells. Now researchers have achieved success in human patients with a ruse...

10 March 2000 | ScienceNOW

Gene Treatment for Hemophilia Shows Promise

by Anna Davison

The idea of replacing faulty genes with functional ones is alluring, but it's come under severe criticism since a volunteer patient with an inherited enzyme deficiency died last fall (Science,...

10 March 2000 | ScienceNOW

Buried Channels May Have Fed Mars Ocean

by Richard A. Kerr

Mars researchers have debated for years whether the planet once hosted a massive ocean. Now a team of geophysicists may have found a missing link in the growing body of...

9 March 2000 | ScienceNOW

Quantum Computing: Do Not Delete

by Charles Seife

Quantum computers won't be delivering your e-mail any time soon, but in theory computers based on the principles of quantum mechanics could be much more powerful than today's models. But...

9 March 2000 | ScienceNOW

Crows Wield Beak-Crafted Tools

by Mitch Leslie

Though it was dogma for decades, the notion that tool-making distinguishes humans from other animals turned out to be a flattering delusion. But of all the animal artisans, only humans...

9 March 2000 | ScienceNOW

Solar Physics on the Far Side

by Robert Irion

The far side of the sun seems inaccessible, obscured from our view by 1.4 million kilometers of hot, seething gas. But because the sun rotates every 27 days, that hidden...

9 March 2000 | ScienceNOW

Earth-Gazing Mission Wins Science Backing

by Andrew Lawler

NASA is forging ahead with a $75 million mission to watch the whole Earth from space following the release of a favorable report 8 March. The Triana project was put...

8 March 2000 | ScienceNOW

Cell Death Generates Hottest Papers

by Constance Holden

The end-of-century winner in the scientific sweepstakes is John C. Reed, director of the Apoptosis and Cell Death Program of the Burnham Institute in La Jolla, California, according to the...

8 March 2000 | ScienceNOW

Drug Research for Children Gets Boost

by Constance Holden

The Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, which supports research on HIV infection in children, is broadening its scope considerably. At a press conference in Los Angeles today, Paul Glaser, chair...

8 March 2000 | ScienceNOW

Evolutionary Biologist William Hamilton Dies

by Jon Cohen

Evolutionary biologist William Hamilton, 63, died 7 March from complications of malaria that he acquired in Africa while on an ambitious expedition to acquire new data about the origin of...

8 March 2000 | ScienceNOW

Science, Not Fiction, in a Canterbury Tale

by Mark Sincell

In Geoffrey Chaucer's 14th century story "The Franklin's Tale," the faithfully married Dorigen tells an adulterous young squire that she will surrender her favors, but only if he can guarantee...

8 March 2000 | ScienceNOW

Reports Urge Overhaul of Mars Program

by Andrew Lawler

Managers of NASA's Mars exploration program are bracing for a potentially devastating report about the failure of two Mars spacecraft last year and the future direction of the effort. An...

7 March 2000 | ScienceNOW

MRI Scans for Enzyme Activity

by Evelyn Strauss

A technique perhaps best known for peering inside athletes' injured knees is now being tuned to tadpoles. A modified magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) procedure allows researchers to watch enzyme activity...

7 March 2000 | ScienceNOW

Plans for Genome Collaboration Fail

by Eliot Marshall

Any hope for a collaboration between genome scientists at commercial and nonprofit labs dissolved this week in bitter arguments over who would control the raw data. The dispute went public...

7 March 2000 | ScienceNOW

Do Cold Babies Become Fat Adults?

by Michael Hagmann

Fat is a great insulator, and animals--including humans--store extra fat when winter sets in. Now a study of birth season and adult weight suggests that being born during the cold...

6 March 2000 | ScienceNOW

Coral Yields Antisunburn Secret

by Elizabeth Finkel

With the southern sun beating down through clear waters, tropical corals need something to protect their delicate tissues from damaging doses of ultraviolet (UV) radiation. Soon their secret shield may...

6 March 2000 | ScienceNOW

Tissue Engineers Nose Ahead

by Adrian Cho

When a team of chemists fashioned a foam nose and filled it with cow cartilage, they weren't clowning around. The researchers made the porous proboscis to show that a new...

6 March 2000 | ScienceNOW

Novel Catalyst Runs Quick and Clean

by Robert F. Service

Score at least a partial victory for green chemistry, the campaign to make industrial processes more environmentally benign. In the 3 March issue of Science, researchers report a way to...

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