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Geology

Rethinking the Geological Layers
March 5, 2004
One of the most formative ideas in Darwin’s intellectual journey was the concept of gradualism, the principle of “small agencies and their cumulative effects.”  This idea became a dominant motif in his philosophy of life.  Describing how the assumption of gradualism permeated his last book (on earthworms) shortly before his death, Janet Browne, in her […]
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Health

Sugar-Dried Blood: Just Add Water
March 4, 2004
A sugar found in shrimp and yeast might save human lives on the battlefield.
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Cell Biology

Cellular Cowboys: How the Cell Rounds Up Chromosomes Before Dividing
March 4, 2004
Cell division is like cowboys lassoing cattle and pulling ones that match into two identical corrals.
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Amazing Facts

Fiber-Optic Sponge Makes Deep-Sea Lamps
March 1, 2004
Last year, it was announced that a deep-sea sponge named the Venus Flower Basket possessed glass strands similar to fiber optic cables (see 08/20/2003 headline).  Now, a five-member team from Bell Labs has performed the first detailed optical analysis of the fibers.  They indeed found these structures to be “remarkably similar to commercial silica optical […]
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Amazing Facts

Respect the Conch Shell
February 19, 2004
Engineers and materials scientists seem to never run out of examples in nature that should fill us with awe.  In the Feb. 19 issue of Nature,1 Rosamund Daw brings our attention to the construction ability of the conch shell: Giant conches are seldom treated with the respect they deserve.  Their impressive shells are prized as […]
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Amazing Facts

Birds Are Memory Champs
February 17, 2004
We humans lose our keys and often can’t remember the location of half a dozen identical items.  “Maybe it takes a bird brain to find the car keys,” teases Susan Milius in the cover story of the Feb. 14 issue of Science News.1  Ornithologists have been intrigued with how birds remember where they stash their […]
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Amazing Facts

DNA Is a Code Operated by Another Code
February 17, 2004
The discovery in the 1950s that DNA stored a coded language was amazing, but recently a new level of complexity has come to the awareness of biochemists.  Apparently, another code determines which DNA genes will be opened for expression and which should be suppressed.     The Feb. 14 issue of Science News1 describes the […]
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Amazing Facts

Your Internal Motors Can Run Nanotech
February 13, 2004
In each cell in your body, and in that of every living thing, there exists a tiny motor named ATP synthase that Science News1 calls “the ultimate molecular machine.”  It converts electrical to chemical energy, writes Alexandra Goho, “with amazing efficiency.”  Now, Japanese have harnessed some of these motors (only 12 millionths of a millimeter […]
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Amazing Facts

“Utmost Precision” Found in DNA Repair Enzyme
February 13, 2004
The cell has many helper enzymes that can repair DNA damage.  One such enzyme, named MutY, has been described in the Feb. 12 issue of Nature.1  Reviewer Tomas Lindahl sets the stage: “Damaged DNA must be removed with the utmost precision, as mistakes are costly.  The structure of a repair enzyme bound to its substrate […]
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Fossils

La Brea Tar Pits Trap Scientists
January 24, 2004
Visitors to the La Brea Tar Pits are not told the whole truth about the fossils.
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Amazing Facts

How Do Plants Know When to Bloom?
January 7, 2004
Scientists like to use big words to impress the rest of us, so they have a term for how a plant decides when to bloom: vernalization.  But making up a word for a phenomenon is not the same as explaining it.     Everybody observes that plants seem to just “know” that spring is here, […]
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Amazing Facts

Your Accelerated Eyes
December 30, 2003
When a beam of light hits your eye, a chain of events is set off that is really quite amazing.  Kendall J. Blumer (Washington University School of Medicine) describes a little of it in the Jan. 1 issue of Nature.1  You don’t have to understand the following description; just be glad you don’t have to […]
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Amazing Facts

Life Runs on Waterwheels
December 22, 2003
The cells of every living thing are filled with molecular machines, and one of the most fascinating is a rotary motor called ATP synthase (see April 2002 back issue, opening paragraph).  This is a true mechanical/electrical motor, found in every living thing from bacteria to elephants and palm trees.  It is really two motors in […]
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Amazing Facts

Intracellular Railroad Has Park-and-Ride System
December 4, 2003
Cells are like miniaturized cities, with elaborate transportation systems ferrying their cargo to and fro (see Feb. 25 headline).  Just like a city may have railroads, busses, cars and monorails, the cell has multiple kinds of transport motors: dyneins, kinesins, and myosins.  Scientists have learned that most of the roadways are like one-way monorails: actin […]
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Amazing Facts

Elaborate Quality Control Governs the Cell’s Protein-Folding Factory
December 20, 2002
If it weren’t for quality control in our cells, we’d be dead.  That’s the gist of an amazing Insight article in the Dec. 18 issue of Nature.1  “Aberrant proteins are extremely harmful to cells,” the authors begin.  How harmful?  Here is a short list of diseases that can result from improperly folded proteins or failures […]
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