January-February 2005 Issue of American Scientist

Media Contact: Charles Blackburn, cblackburn@sigmaxi.org

For Immediate Release

December 15, 2004

Complimentary copies of the January-February issue of American Scientist are available to journalists on request.

New Technique Could Detect Land Mines and Terrorist Bombs

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, NC - Hidden bombs, whether in the form of land mines or explosive-laden shoes, pose a terrible menace to civilized society. One tactic used to detect such lethal devices is to "sniff" for the explosive chemicals they contain, using dogs or electronic sensors.

But fully encapsulated material will not give off a telltale scent. Another technique called neutron-activation analysis is plagued by a tendency of the detector to be set off by everyday substances rich in nitrogen.

In the January-February American Scientist magazine, chemists Joel B. Miller of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and Geoffrey A. Barrall of Quantum Magnetics describe a third approach that circumvents both of these problems by using a physical phenomenon called nuclear quadrupole resonance (NQR).

The technique is similar to the resonance used in magnetic resonance imaging but offers an advantage, especially in the case of land mines: the target of an NQR detector does not need to be immersed in a strong magnetic field. What's more, NQR boasts greater sensitivity to variations in material composition.

Miller and Barrall explain in their article, called "Explosives Detection with Nuclear Quadruple Resonance," the principles behind this technology and describe the technical roadblocks yet to be overcome. They say NQR could have other applications as well, including the nondestructive evaluation of materials.

American Scientist is an illustrated bimonthly magazine of science and technology published by Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society. Other articles in the January-February issue include:

Exercise Controls Gene Expression
Most people think of skeletal muscle as the tissue that makes us move, and when they think of skeletal muscle and exercise, they think of Olympians. Both perceptions grossly oversimplify this most plentiful of all tissues in the human body. Genes in skeletal muscle are exquisitely responsive to changes in loads, in some cases responding with protein production within minutes of the onset of exercise. The actions of these proteins explain adaptations to exercise as wide ranging as long-term improvements in fitness and extremely short-term protection of the nervous system from glycogen depletion. Further, their absence in sedentary people may also help cause obesity, type-2 diabetes and even some cancers. Authors Frank W. Booth at the University of Missouri-Columbia and P. Darrell Neufer at Yale University hypothesize that these systems, refined through millennia in our hunter-gatherer ancestors, have become maladaptive in the past few centuries as our physical activity levels have plummeted.

The Star-formation History of the Universe
Modern cosmologies suggest that the universe was quite dark for much of its first billion years. During these dark ages, the universe contained clouds of hydrogen gas, but little else-the first stars did not form until several hundred million years had passed. Once the cosmic star-making machinery got going, however, it churned out giant balls of burning gas with a passion-there are now thought to be 1021 stars in the observable universe. After studying the ages of the stars in nearly 100,000 galaxies, University of Edinburgh astrophysicist Alan Heavens estimated the rate at which the universe formed stars at different periods in its history. His results challenge the traditional view and suggest that large and small galaxies may have formed most of their stars at different times in the past.

The Home of Blue Water Fish
Most people are familiar with the migratory behavior of terrestrial animals, but even specialists know little about the migrations of marine species. Among these deep-sea wanderers are so-called pelagic fishes, which inhabit the wide expanse of oceanic waters far from the coast. The lack of knowledge about the behavior and ecology of such species has hindered efforts to maintain healthy populations, especially in the face of strong pressure from human fishers. In this article, authors Peter Klimley, John E. Richert and Salvador J. Jorgensen, all at the University of California, Davis, describe their research in the Gulf of California, where they observe that pelagic fishes often form seasonal groups, or assemblages, that migrate between shallow seamounts and similar topographic features in the ocean. Their analyses of seamount ecosystems promises to aid the work of conservationists and fisheries managers who seek to preserve the diversity and quantity of pelagic fish.

Grass-roots Justice in Tanzania
Tanzania is a country troubled by political corruption and crime, but one of its many ethnic groups, the Sukuma, has recently achieved remarkable success in building sustainable communities with social controls. These rapidly created justice and economic systems require high levels of cooperation. Using anthropological techniques including an "ultimatum game," authors Brian Paciotti, Craig Hadley, Christopher Holmes and Monique Borgerhoff Mulder examine the Sukuma's achievements as a case study in cultural evolution and argue that cooperative institutions promote adaptation. Paciotti and Mulder are at the University of California, Davis; Hadley is at Brown University; and Holmes is at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Paperboy Ingenuity, Illustrating How It Works, New UPC Symbols and more...
Also in the January-February American Scientist, in follow-up to an earlier column, engineering columnist Henry Petroski takes another look at the ingenuity shown by paperboys in folding newspapers. Petroski is A. S. Vesic Professor of Civil Engineering and a professor of history at Duke University.

In "Sightings," Felice Frankel takes us behind the scenes at the How It Works technology feature in The New York Times, where award-winning illustrators show how new gadgets work. Frankel is a science photographer and research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In "Marginalia," Cornell University Nobel Prize-winning chemist Roald Hoffmann tells the story of a most unusual intersection of science and popular culture in Brazil during Carnaval in Rio, for which a samba school adopted a science theme.

January 2005 is the official "sunrise" date for 13-digit UPC symbols. "Computing Science" columnist Brian Hayes uses the occasion to look at namespaces and the recurrent problem of how they overflow. Hayes is Senior Writer for American Scientist.

Meanwhile, in "Science Observer," the editors ask whether cosmic rays from the galaxy might affect Earth's climate, and whether fruit-fly larvae can teach us something about how wounds heal.

Finally, among the many books reviewed in "Scientists' Bookshelf," bioethicist Arthur Caplan gives his take on three new books on Big Pharma: The Truth about the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It, by Marcia Angell (former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine); On the Take: How Big Business Is Corrupting American Medicine, by Jerome P. Kassirer (another former NEJM editor); and Powerful Medicines: The Benefits, Risks and Costs of Prescription Drugs, by Jerry Avorn (another M.D. with ties to Harvard). Paul Farber assesses Richard Rhodes's John James Audubon: The Making of an American and Under a Wild Sky: John James Audubon and the Making of The Birds of America, by William Souder. David Weatherall reviews Horace Freeland Judson's The Great Betrayal: Fraud in Science. Anthropologist Lawrence Straus says George Frison's Survival by Hunting: Prehistoric Human Predators and Animal Prey is a fascinating and instructive guide to the hunting of mega-game by Paleoindians of the High Plains and Rockies. Meanwhile, in Understanding the Universe: From Quarks to the Cosmos, Kate Scholberg says author Don Lincoln takes readers on a rollicking tour of the world of particle physics.