Новости науки и техники в "Scientific American"

ASTRONOMERS FIND MOST ANCIENT PLANET YET

Astronomers have detected the most ancient planet yet known orbiting a binary system thousands of light years away. The new discovery indicates that planet formation in the Milky Way may have started sooner and been more widespread than previously believed.

CRABS CAPABLE OF SWITCHING SKELETONS

To most people, the most significant difference between hard- and soft-shelled crabs lies in how easy they are to eat. But new research indicates that the distinction is in fact much more striking than that. Blue crabs actually alternate between two types of skeletons as they transition from hard shells to soft ones and back again.

BOOKSTORE: A TRAVELER'S GUIDE TO MARS: THE MYSTERIOUS LANDSCAPES OF THE RED PLANET by William K. Hartmann

Is Mars letting us down? In the 1980s and early 1990s, many planetary scientists got the sinking feeling that the Red Planet wasn't living up to humanity's expectations. Its surface was lifeless, its volcanoes extinct. Evidence of an Earth-like past was looking shaky. When I entered graduate school in planetary science during this period, I was discouraged from doing research on Mars, as the data from the Viking spacecraft of the mid-1970s had been thoroughly picked over. Follow-up missions from the U.S. and the Soviet Union floundered. Scientists found themselves pitted against "Face on Mars" conspiracy theorists in television debates.

WHAT A LITTLE LIMEADE CAN DO

A patent gives the holder the right to exclude others from making, using or selling an invention for 20 years from the filing date. The holders of the following selection of patents - a continuation of last month's column on out-of-the-ordinary issuances from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office - will probably not have to worry too much about having to mount an aggressive program to protect their intellectual property.

NEW SURPRISES FROM MYSTERIOUS PLUTO

Pluto, the most distant of the nine planets in our solar system, has piqued the curiosity of astronomers once again. It seems the planet's atmosphere is expanding as it travels away from the sun, rather than contracting as expected.

NANOTECH FOR NEW ORGANS

Scientists have taken what may be a key step toward creating human organs such as livers and kidneys. Taking their cue from the body's own vascular system, researchers from M.I.T. and Harvard Medical School constructed a microscopic device capable of supplying oxygen and nutrients to organ cells.

ASK THE EXPERTS: WHY DO WE DREAM?

Ernest Hartmann, a professor of psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine and the director of the Sleep Disorders Center at Newton Wellesley Hospital in Boston, Mass., explains.