June 2000 Archives

30 June 2000 | ScienceNOW

Survivin Powers Activate When Twinned

by R. John Davenport

When cancer cells proliferate, they appear to need the help of a protein called survivin: The protein is abundant in cancer cells but almost absent from normal cells. This dependence...

30 June 2000 | ScienceNOW

Plan 9 From EuroSpace

by Charles Seife

Now you don't have to feel guilty when you plop down on the couch to watch Star Trek reruns. You're doing research! The European Space Agency (ESA) is encouraging all...

30 June 2000 | ScienceNOW

Star Systems Show Previously Unknown Power

by Alexander Hellemans

Astronomers have found a strange new species in the cosmic zoo: a microquasar that emits gamma rays. The rare beast would be a new source for gamma rays, which have...

29 June 2000 | ScienceNOW

Lose Weight Now, Ask Mice How

by Trisha Gura

To regulate the amount of fat that swaddles the body, the body has to tell the brain how much food it needs. Now researchers report that a molecule that helps...

29 June 2000 | ScienceNOW

Kyoto Prizes Announced

by Constance Holden

The man who found the homeobox is one of three winners of this year's 50-million-yen ($475,000 each) Kyoto Prizes. Developmental biologist Walter Jacob Gehring of the University of Basel in...

29 June 2000 | ScienceNOW

Liver Cells Replenished by Bone Marrow

by Elizabeth Norton Lasley

The liver has amazing powers of regeneration. Unlike most organs, it can regrow--even after as much as half of its tissue has been surgically removed. Now researchers have found that...

28 June 2000 | ScienceNOW

Neighborhood Gamma Ray Burst Boosts Theory

by Govert Schilling

Titanic explosions that emit powerful flashes of energetic gamma rays are one of astronomy's hottest mysteries. Now an analysis of the nearest gamma ray burst yet detected has added weight...

28 June 2000 | ScienceNOW

Mental Health Study: Age Trumps Angst

by Mitch Leslie

If your gums or hairline are in full retreat, your knees have gone gimpy and your hair is gray, don't despair. Despite the physical decline, you'll probably be happier as...

28 June 2000 | ScienceNOW

New Cloning Achievement Adds Genes

by Elizabeth Pennisi

Cloned sheeps, pigs, or cows that produce proteins and organs for medicine are one giant step closer to reality. For the first time, experts have cloned "knock-in" sheep in which...

27 June 2000 | ScienceNOW

The Sweet Signal of Sugar in Space

by Mark Sincell

Astronomers have discovered the first extraterrestrial sugar, sweetening up the center of the Milky Way. Because sugar molecules are essential ingredients of DNA and other biological building blocks, the finding...

27 June 2000 | ScienceNOW

Newest AIDS Figures Show Worldwide Scourge

by Jon Cohen

HIV continues to run riot, according to new figures from the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). The deadly virus now infects 34.3 million people around the globe, up...

27 June 2000 | ScienceNOW

The Genome Cooperation Outlook

by Eliot Marshall

Yesterday's White House ceremony announcing the near completion of the human genome was more than a celebration of "an epic-making triumph of science and reason," as President Clinton called it....

27 June 2000 | ScienceNOW

Strong Bones From a Heart Drug

by Dan Ferber

For the millions of people worldwide with osteoporosis, one tumble can break a hip, and a hug can crack a rib. Drugs can stop bones from thinning, but can't rebuild...

26 June 2000 | ScienceNOW

Human Genome Spelled Out

by Elizabeth Pennisi

Beaming at each other, longtime rivals Francis Collins and J. Craig Venter shook hands in the East Room of the White House today. They declared joint victory--and announced an implicit...

26 June 2000 | ScienceNOW

Touring Scientists Targeted by Spies

by David Malakoff

Foreign spies apparently find traveling U.S. nuclear scientists irresistible. A congressional report released today details dozens of sometimes clumsy attempts by foreign agents to obtain nuclear secrets, from offering scientists...

26 June 2000 | ScienceNOW

Plant Genome Bolts Beyond Human Draft

by Christine Mlot

MADISON, WISCONSIN--As champagne corks popped today in Washington, D.C., over news that the human genome has been almost completely sequenced, researchers here quietly learned that their favorite plant's genome is...

26 June 2000 | ScienceNOW

Colorblindness Gene Found in Pacific Islanders

by Valerie Brown

A band of Micronesian islanders and a deadly storm have helped scientists pin down a gene for color vision. For more than 30 years, vision researchers have been attracted to...

23 June 2000 | ScienceNOW

Pentagon: Trust Us, Missile Defense Will Work

by Adrian Cho

WASHINGTON, D.C.--The Pentagon said yesterday that classified data prove the controversial National Missile Defense (NMD) system will work, even as some members of Congress called for an investigation into charges...

23 June 2000 | ScienceNOW

Gene Links Nerve Growth, Memory

by Kate O'Rourke

For the past century, brain scientists have speculated that the act of learning changes connections between brain cells. Now researchers have more direct evidence: A gene that helps nerves hook...

23 June 2000 | ScienceNOW

Reviving the Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone

by David Malakoff

A long-awaited White House plan to shrink the Gulf of Mexico's "dead zone" calls for major cuts in river-borne nutrients and more funds to create pollution-trapping wetlands and streamside buffers....

22 June 2000 | ScienceNOW

What's in the Los Alamos Disks?

by David Malakoff

The temporary disappearance of two computer hard drives, smaller than a paperback spy novel, at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico has focused attention on the government's mobile...

22 June 2000 | ScienceNOW

Ancient 'Feathers' Ruffle Dinosaur Fans

by Erik Stokstad

A bizarre reptile with vane-like appendages sprouting from its spine may have been the ancestor of birds, according to a group of scientific mavericks. But researchers who believe that birds...

22 June 2000 | ScienceNOW

Dribbles on Mars May Mean Water

by Richard A. Kerr

WASHINGTON, D.C.--Water has recently flowed from crater and valley walls on Mars and may be seeping still, planetary geologists announced Thursday morning at a press conference at NASA headquarters. Although...

21 June 2000 | ScienceNOW

Death Gives Birth to Neocortex Neurons

by Elizabeth Norton Lasley

In the past few years, neuroscientists have shown that the adult brain can do something once thought impossible: grow new neurons. But one area of the brain--the neocortex, the site...

21 June 2000 | ScienceNOW

Astronomers Get Dibs on Wavelengths

by Gary Taubes

A surge of recent technical advances in radio astronomy has opened a window on millimeter-scale wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum. But scientists have been in danger of losing this precious...

21 June 2000 | ScienceNOW

Magnetic Field Skews Molecular Handedness

by Charles Seife

Magnetic fields might have a hand in the "handedness" of molecules, two physicists say. Using a powerful magnet, they have shown that magnetic fields can influence the selective destruction of...

20 June 2000 | ScienceNOW

Atom-Smasher Pumps Out First Mini Bang

by Adrian Cho

A long-awaited particle accelerator powered up last week and began smashing the nuclei of atoms in the highest energy collisions ever achieved in a laboratory. Physicists hope such collisions will...

20 June 2000 | ScienceNOW

Report Tracks Federal R&D Funding

by Jeffrey Mervis

Maryland is the most research-intensive state in the country, according to a new report that describes in unprecedented detail where the federal government's annual $80 billion research budget is spent....

20 June 2000 | ScienceNOW

Task Force Uncovers Abundant Fraud in German Lab

by Michael Hagmann

A new report paints a darker picture of what may be the highest profile case of scientific fraud in postwar Germany. Former hematologist and cancer researcher Friedhelm Herrmann, a well-known...

19 June 2000 | ScienceNOW

Tiny Tubes With the Strength of Steel

by Alexander Hellemans

Nanoscopic size and unusual electrical properties have made carbon nanotubes one of the hottest new materials to come out of physics labs in recent years. They're also one of the...

19 June 2000 | ScienceNOW

A New 'Self' Message for Immune Cells

by Michael Hagmann

To avoid being killed by the immune system, a body's cells carry messages that mark them as friends, not foes. Until now, researchers only knew about a type of message...

19 June 2000 | ScienceNOW

Data Hideaway on Abandoned Isle

by Jocelyn Kaiser

Worried that government snoopers can eavesdrop on your e-mail or Web browsings? If it's absolute privacy you seek, soon you can rent a server housed on a rusting hunk of...

16 June 2000 | ScienceNOW

Gargantuan Galaxy Survey Weighs the Universe

by Robert Irion

ROCHESTER, NY--A team of astronomers has measured the motions of 100,000 galaxies, four times the number charted in any previous survey. The massive and still-growing survey gives astronomers their first...

16 June 2000 | ScienceNOW

New Fuel Cell Is Coolest of All

by Robert F. Service

Fuel cells are an environmentalist's dream: They generate electricity from fossil fuels without burning them and spewing pollutants. The devices haven't become a commercial success, however, in part because fuel...

16 June 2000 | ScienceNOW

Bacterial Culprit Nabbed in Heroin Deaths

by Michael Hagmann

Microbe hunters think they have finally identified the lethal bug that has killed more than three dozen heroin users in the United Kingdom and Ireland since early May. The bacterium...

15 June 2000 | ScienceNOW

Scientists Win Big at MacArthur

by Constance Holden

A sizeable number of scientists are among the 25 winners of this year's half-million-dollar MacArthur awards. Although often referred to as the "genius" awards, the 5-year, no-strings-attached MacArthur Fellowships are...

15 June 2000 | ScienceNOW

El Niño Punishes Migratory Birds

by Ayala Ochert

The population of a migratory bird species drops dramatically whenever El Niño, everybody's favorite source of strange weather, raises its head. If the population of endangered species fluctuates the same...

15 June 2000 | ScienceNOW

'Immortality Enzyme' Could Trigger Cancer

by Mitch Leslie

An enzyme that can make cells live forever has been touted as a key to understanding aging and treating diseases from AIDS to diabetes. However, the enzyme may also turn...

14 June 2000 | ScienceNOW

Biological Clock Ticks Louder When Bees Take on Regular Work Hours

by Elizabeth Norton Lasley

Life's not fair in a beehive. Younger bees get to hang out with the honey, while older ones must fly out and forage for nectar. Now a study shows that...

14 June 2000 | ScienceNOW

Web Site Keeps Up With a Changing World

by Science News Staff

Atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide belched out by cars and power plants soar, while amphibian populations plummet and glaciers dwindle like an ice cube in your palm. These are just...

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