Science News

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 09:39:20 EST

Survey Finds Growing Deceit Among Teens

NEW YORK (Associated Press)—In the past year, 30 percent of U.S. high school students have stolen from a store and 64 percent have cheated on a test, according to a new, large-scale survey suggesting that Americans are apathetic about ethical standards. ...

from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

Anatomy of a Meltdown

Some are born radical. Some are made radical. And some have radicalism thrust upon them. That is the way with Ben Bernanke, as he struggles to rescue the American financial system from collapse. ...

from the New Yorker

Procrastinating Again? How to Kick the Habit

Raymond, a high-powered attorney, habitually put off returning important business calls and penning legal briefs, behaviors that seriously threatened his career. Raymond (not his real name) sought help from clinical psychologist William Knaus, who practices in Longmeadow, Mass. ...

from the Scientific American

Pharmaceuticals: Absence of Evidence

... A study published in PLoS Medicine, an online journal, confirms what many have suspected and what previous studies have hinted at: drug companies try to spin the results of clinical trials. If this were done merely in marketing materials, it might be tolerable. ...

from the Economist

Sources of Saturn Moon's Supersonic Water Jets Revealed

Jets of water vapor blasting out of Saturn's moon Enceladus at supersonic speeds are coming from vents each about the size of a professional sports stadium, a new study says. ...

from National Geographic News

How the Turtle's Shell Evolved

A newly discovered fossil from China has shed light on how the turtle's shell evolved. The 220 million-year-old find, described in Nature journal, shows that the turtle's breast plate developed earlier than the rest of its shell. ...

from the BBC News Online

Hopkins Study Supports Use of CT Scan of Heart

Advanced CT scans that cardiologists have been slow to embrace are nearly as effective as the invasive and expensive surgical methods typically used to diagnose coronary blockages, according to new research out today by Johns Hopkins doctors. ...

from the Baltimore Sun

In Space, a Cluster of Health Dangers

Space shuttle commander Christopher Ferguson and his crew took a small but crucial step for space travel in the last two weeks, enlarging the International Space Station so it can house six astronauts instead of three. ...

from the Philadelphia Inquirer

The Minimal Impact of a Big Hypertension Study

The surprising news made headlines in December 2002. Generic pills for high blood pressure, which had been in use since the 1950s and cost only pennies a day, worked better than newer drugs that were up to 20 times as expensive. ...

from the New York Times (Registration Required)

Study Finds Distractions Blunt Memory with Age

Brain scans of older people in a noisy lab machine give biological backing to the idea that distraction hampers memory with aging, researchers reported Wednesday. ...

from the San Francisco Chronicle

Fewer Smokers Linked to Lower Cancer Death Rate

The number of new cancer cases and deaths are falling for both men and women for the first time since the government began compiling a report on long-term trends, researchers announced Tuesday. ...

from USA Today

Milky Way's Sweetness Throughout

A simple sugar that is an ingredient of life has been found for the first time in a relatively hospitable part of the galaxy. ...

from the BBC News Online

Oceans Ten Times More Acidic Than Thought

Increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may make Earth's oceans more acidic faster than previously thought—unbalancing ecosystems in the process, a new study says. ...

from National Geographic News

Patternicity: Finding Meaningful Patterns in Meaningless Noise

Why do people see faces in nature, interpret window stains as human figures, hear voices in random sounds generated by electronic devices or find conspiracies in the daily news? A proximate cause is the priming effect, in which our brain and senses are prepared to interpret stimuli according to an expected model. ...

from the Scientific American

Standard Model Gets Right Answer for Proton, Neutron Masses

When it comes to weighty matters, quarks and gluons rule the universe, a new study confirms. ...

from Science News

Recipes for Life: How Genes Evolve

Once, we could only marvel at the wonder of life. Like movie audiences not so long ago, we had little idea of what went on behind the scenes. How times have changed. As the genomes of more and more species are sequenced, geneticists are piecing together an extraordinarily detailed "Making of..." documentary. ...

from New Scientist

Iron Science

Anyone who thinks that iron science means the laborious study of the chemical element number 26, think again. A Canadian competition called Iron Science pits teams of science teachers against each other in a challenge to deliver the most creative approach to communicating science and engineering. And it reached its final conclusion Nov. 21. ...

from the Scientist (Registration Required)

Single-Celled Giant Upends Early Evolution

Slowly rolling across the ocean floor, a humble single-celled creature is poised to revolutionize our understanding of how complex life evolved on Earth. ...

from the MSNBC

Galaxy 'Missing Link' Uncovered

Astronomers have identified a type of galaxy that represents a "missing link" in our understanding of the Universe. Spiral and elliptical galaxies used to be known exclusively as "blue" and "red," respectively. But two studies, published in a Royal Astronomical Society journal, show that one in five galaxies is a red spiral. ...

from the BBC News Online

Tracing a Crime Suspect Through a Relative

Los Angeles Police Department investigators want to search the state's DNA database—not for exact matches to a mysterious serial killer but for any profiles similar enough to belong to a parent or sibling. The hope is that one of those family members might lead detectives to the killer. ...

from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)