Новости науки и техники в "Scientific American"

SOLAR FLARE SERVES UP ANTIMATTER SURPRISES

When scientists want to study antimatter on Earth, they have to accelerate particles to dizzying speeds and smash them together to create tiny amounts of it. Solar flares, brilliant explosions among the most powerful in the solar system, are much more efficient at churning it out. The results of the most detailed study yet of a solar flare indicate that each burst can create up to a pound of antimatter. Furthermore, the material behaves differently than expected.

SKULL STUDY COMPLICATES ORIGINS OF FIRST AMERICANS

When a young child asks, "Where did I come from" the question can be answered quite simply, albeit perhaps a bit self-consciously. Determining just how humans arrived in the Americas, in contrast, has proved remarkably difficult. One theory holds that the first people to enter the New World came from northeast Asia about 12,000 years ago and were the direct ancestors of present-day Native Americans. But fossils bearing similarities to populations from south Asia and the southern Pacific Rim have posed difficulties for this explanation. New findings add further fuel to the debate over the peopling of the New World, supporting a more varied geographical history for the first Americans.

NEW BOOK: THE LAND OF NAKED PEOPLE: ENCOUNTERS WITH STONE AGE ISLANDERS by Madhusree Mukerjee

Imagine a place where the inhabitants use only Stone Age tools, do not know how to spark a fire and fiercely defend their territory against outsiders, using bows and arrows to kill or injure anyone who dares to intrude. That would be the Andaman Islands, the Land of Naked People, an archipelago off the coast of India where a tribe called the Jarawa has thrived for millennia, all but untouched by the influence of other cultures. Mukerjee, a former Scientific American editor, worked for years to gain access to the Jarawa and other, less hostile, tribes on the Andamans. Using her Indian family connections and dogged determination to cut through the red tape designed to shield the often corrupt Indian officials who manage the Andamans, Mukerjee visited one of the last aboriginal peoples. She weaves her contemporary observations of the various Andaman tribes together with historical accounts of their contacts with outsiders, yielding a fabric rich with meaning about what vastly different peoples can learn from one another.

BLOOD TEST MAY REVEAL SMOKERS' RISK OF LUNG CANCER

Smoking is a major cause of lung cancer, which accounts for 30 percent of all cancer deaths. But new research indicates that some smokers are at greater risk of developing the disease than others. Those who carry a newly discovered genetic marker are up to 10 times more likely to get lung cancer than those who don't, scientists say.

PUBLIC NOT WELCOME

A patient newly diagnosed with leukemia, a parent concerned about a risky operation her child is facing, a precocious high school student - whatever their motivation, ordinary citizens have for decades enjoyed free access to the latest scientific and medical literature, so long as they could make their way to a state-funded university library. That is rapidly changing as public research libraries, squeezed between state budget cuts and a decade of rampant inflation in journal prices, drop printed journals in droves. The online versions that remain are often beyond the reach of "unaffiliated" visitors.

NEW ANTHRAX VACCINE PROTECTS ON TWO FRONTS

The events of the fall of 2001 highlighted the need for an effective treatment against anthrax used as a weapon. Antibiotics can kill the bacterium, but the toxin it secretes may already be present at lethal levels in the body when this treatment is administered. The current vaccine, meanwhile, only targets one of the three parts of the toxin released by Bacillus anthracis. A new approach provides a more effective defense against anthrax in mice.

ASK THE EXPERTS: HOW DO YOU GET A COMPUTER VIRUS?

Geoff Kuenning, an assistant professor of computer science at Harvey Mudd College, explains.