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2 November 1998 | ScienceNOW

Monkeys Show Benefits of Eating Less

by Jennifer Couzin-Frankel

Scientists are edging closer to proving in primates what's been demonstrated dozens of times in rodents since the 1930s: Sharply reducing caloric intake can slow the process of aging to...

28 September 1998 | ScienceNOW

Fetal Mutations From Secondhand Smoke

by Kevin Boyd

In newborns exposed to secondhand smoke, mutations in an important gene occur at a high rate, according to a pilot study in next month's Nature Medicine. The findings suggest that...

2 September 1998 | ScienceNOW

Mutant Mice Mimic Osteoporosis

by Phil Berardelli

A new strain of mice with weak bones and stunted growth may become an important tool for researchers to study how bones gradually disintegrate in people who suffer from osteoporosis....

26 August 1998 | ScienceNOW

Rich Couple Pays to Have Pet Cloned

by Constance Holden

Some entrepreneurs might get dollar signs in their eyes at the thought of being the first to offer pet cloning services. Now one lucky scientist--Mark Westhusin, director of the cloning...

14 August 1998 | ScienceNOW

Viagra for Flies?

by Eva Emerson

Starve a fruit fly and it will live a longer, albeit practically celibate, life. But give these old coots a diet of protein and something amazing happens. The flies not...

30 June 1998 | ScienceNOW

Three Steps Forward on Alzheimer's

by Science News Staff

It's been almost a century since Alois Alzheimer first found fibrous plaques infesting the brains of people with senile dementia, but scientists still don't know for sure how--or even if--the...

30 June 1998 | ScienceNOW

Mice From Dust: Just Add Water

by Science News Staff

What can be stored in the pantry for months then made whole just by adding water? Evaporated milk, instant coffee, Tang--and freeze-dried mouse sperm. In a first, scientists report in...

26 June 1998 | ScienceNOW

An Organization Man

by Science News Staff

Hans Spemann, a pioneer in developmental biology, was born on 27 June 1869. His work helped scientists understand that cells in developing embryos influence the fate of their neighbors. As...

11 June 1998 | ScienceNOW

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS--"No fear." It's the brazen brand name of youth-oriented fitness gear. Now brain scans have revealed some truth behind the hype: Teenage brains, it appears, have not fully developed...

4 June 1998 | ScienceNOW

Cholesterol Linked to Cyclopic Animals

by Science News Staff

Certain naturally occurring toxins can cause animals to give birth to young with a single eye and a malformed brain. Part of the reason, researchers propose in tomorrow's Science, is...

22 May 1998 | ScienceNOW

Transgenic Calves Cloned

by Science News Staff

Scientists have cloned three calves that carry a foreign gene. The success, described in today's Science, opens the field for herds of transgenic cows that could produce copious amounts of...

7 May 1998 | ScienceNOW

Semenal Work on the Fate of Sperm

by Science News Staff

A sperm fast and lucky enough to fertilize an egg gets to pass on its genes. But now researchers have shown, for flies at least, that the champion meets an...

2 April 1998 | ScienceNOW

Closing the Regeneration Gap

by Science News Staff

Today is the 70th birthday of Elizabeth Hay, an embryologist at Harvard Medical School who, through pioneering studies on regeneration of amphibian limbs, has shed light on the cellular mechanisms...

10 March 1998 | ScienceNOW

Fat Hormone Needed for Puberty

by Science News Staff

Scientists have the first solid evidence that leptin--the hormone famous for making fat mice thin--also affects sexual development in humans. In a remote Turkish village, researchers have located a family...

19 November 1997 | ScienceNOW

Jumpy Gene Brought Back to Life

by Science News Staff

Scientists have resurrected an ancient gene that can jump between chromosomes in the cells of zebra fish, salmon, and humans. Their work could overcome a stumbling block for gene therapy...

6 November 1997 | ScienceNOW

Digital Penis

by Science News Staff

The penis may have more in common with other stubby projections--fingers and toes--than most of us might have guessed. Researchers have discovered that the same genes that direct a mammalian...

27 August 1997 | ScienceNOW

Lifestyles of the Big and Brainy

by Science News Staff

ARNHEM, THE NETHERLANDS--Natural selection can reshape the mammalian brain as well as change its size, a researcher announced here this week at the biennial meeting of the European Society for...

25 August 1997 | ScienceNOW

Setting the Embryological Record Straight

by Science News Staff

Generations of biology students have been convinced--in part because of drawings done 123 years ago by the German biologist Ernst Haeckel--that vertebrate embryos of different animals pass through an identical...

9 July 1997 | ScienceNOW

Bilingual Kids Have More Economic Brains

by Science News Staff

Researchers have found that the brains of people who grow up bilingual process the two languages differently from those who learn a second tongue later in life. Bilingual children appear...

27 June 1997 | ScienceNOW

Primitive Fish Hold Key to Healing Spinal Cords?

by Science News Staff

The sea lamprey, unlike a person or any other higher vertebrate for that matter, can repair its spinal cord when it is severed. Now researchers have a hint of where...

26 June 1997 | ScienceNOW

Scientists Stumble Across New Alzheimer's Plaque

by Science News Staff

An ill-behaved brain protein that escaped notice for over 90 years has unexpectedly emerged as a major possible cause of Alzheimer's disease. The unidentified protein forms a previously unknown variety...

19 June 1997 | ScienceNOW

Varmus Reprimanded Over 'Renegade Researcher'

by Science News Staff

WASHINGTON, D.C.--As the sole witness for 3 hours of questioning on embryo research, Harold Varmus, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), endured a grilling on Capitol Hill today...

5 June 1997 | ScienceNOW

Recounting a Flawed Past

by Science News Staff

Scientists have found evidence that the brain has separate centers for understanding the rules of grammar and for understanding exceptions to the rules. The provocative findings, reported in today's issue...

5 June 1997 | ScienceNOW

Born to Be Wise

by Science News Staff

Whether we become dotards or quick-witted retirees appears to have more to do with our genes than years of schooling or experience. That startling conclusion, reported in tomorrow's issue of...

30 May 1997 | ScienceNOW

Yeast Protein Supports Prion Theory

by Science News Staff

Researchers may have learned how a yeast protein usurps the usual role of DNA: transmitting a trait from one generation to the next. A few molecules of the protein, they...

22 May 1997 | ScienceNOW

New Brakes for Nerve Growth

by Science News Staff

Scientists have found that proteins that stimulate the growth and survival of nerve cells as they build the brain do more than just that. A report, published tomorrow in the...

2 April 1997 | ScienceNOW

Closing the Regeneration Gap

by Science News Staff

Today is the 70th birthday of Elizabeth Hay, an embryologist at Harvard Medical School who, through pioneering studies on regeneration of amphibian limbs, has shed light on the cellular mechanisms...

1 April 1997 | ScienceNOW

Bird-Brained: A Compliment?

by Science News Staff

The mammals' main claim to fame--besides hair and nipples--is its bulging forebrain, or cerebral cortex, which controls aspects of thought and emotion. Now neurobiologists report in today's issue of the...

27 March 1997 | ScienceNOW

Gene Knows It Like the Back of a Hand

by Science News Staff

Have you ever wondered how your palm became different from the back of your hand? Scientists now think they have a clue to the answer: They have found the genes...

18 March 1997 | ScienceNOW

Primordial Eye Within Sight

by Science News Staff

Human eyes, fly eyes, and horseshoe crab eyes, to name a few, differ so greatly that it would seem nature invented eyes dozens of times across the animal kingdom. A...

11 March 1997 | ScienceNOW

House Targets Embryo Researcher

by Science News Staff

WASHINGTON, D.C.--Congress has launched an investigation into controversial human embryo studies conducted by Mark Hughes, a molecular geneticist who once worked at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Representative Joe...

14 February 1997 | ScienceNOW

Life in the Slow Lane

by Science News Staff

Slow living leads to longer life, at least in a group of common soil worms called nematodes. That's the conclusion of a new study published in today's issue of Science,*...

4 February 1997 | ScienceNOW

Embattled Embryo Researcher Quits Georgetown

by Science News Staff

WASHINGTON--Mark Hughes, an internationally known leader in DNA diagnostics, has resigned from Georgetown University after coming under fire for allegedly failing to honor a ban on human embryo research. Until...

17 January 1997 | ScienceNOW

He Shot Down the Tiny Adult Theory

by Science News Staff

Tomorrow is the birthday of German surgeon and physiologist Kaspar Friedrich Wolff, born in 1733. Regarded as the founder of embryology, Wolff published in 1759 a revolutionary work called Theoria...

21 November 1996 | ScienceNOW

In Vitro Fertilization: Often a Bad Egg

by Science News Staff

The odds that a woman will give birth after a fertilized egg is artificially introduced into her uterus appear to be much lower than fertility clinics tend to imply, according...

16 October 1996 | ScienceNOW

Fruit Flies From A to Z

by Science News Staff

The most intimate secrets of the darling of genetics will be laid bare for all to see on the World Wide Web on 17 October. No, it's not a kiss-and-tell;...