Science & Society
In Brief |h 1 : Under a blood-red volcanic sky
It may be the most famous scream in art--a terrified, tormented figure in anguish beneath a ferocious red sunset. Most art historians assumed Edvard Munch was just having a really bad day, but three astronomers have a different theory. In the February issue of Sky and Telescope, the team from Texas State University argues that The Scream was inspired by the dramatic sunsets caused by a volcanic eruption on the Indonesian island of Krakatoa. The explosion killed tens of thousands, and the debris it sent skyward caused dramatic sunsets around the world for months. An entry in the Norwegian artist's journal described a lonely walk at sunset when "all at once the sky became blood red . . . a great unending scream piercing through nature." Clearly, the eruption made an impression. A decade later, Munch painted his masterpiece. -Andrew Curry
In Brief |h 1 : Seeing Straight
Eating doughnuts and other fatty treats doubles the risk of going blind later in life. That's the conclusion of researchers at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, who since 1989 have been studying whether diet plays a role in causing age-related macular degeneration, the leading cause of irreversible blindness in the United States. The disease attacks cells in the center of the retina and can rob people of the ability to read and drive.
Although macular degeneration is common, affecting one quarter of people over age 75 to some degree, it's unclear what causes it. The study, published last week in the Archives of Ophthalmology, was the first to discover that eating a high-fat diet increases the risk of vision loss. Almost all fats were implicated, but processed baked goods rated the highest relative risk. They often contain trans-unsaturated fats, which have been implicated in heart disease.
But people who ate lots of fish and nuts, which contain healthy omega-3 oils, were less apt to lose vision. Omega-3 fatty acids are actually present in the retina; their artery-clearing qualities may help maintain blood flow to the eye. -Nancy Shute
In Brief |h 1 : Scaredy-Rats
Being afraid of new experiences may shorten your life. Researchers at the University of Chicago put rats in containers with new objects, like a rock or a food bin, to see how they would react. The brave rats that investigated their new environs and wandered widely lived a median of 701 days, compared with 599 days for their shy and nervous brothers. The fearful rats also produced more corticosterone, a hormone involved in stress response, says the report in last week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Carrying around more of that hormone may have made the scaredy-rats age faster. -Helen Fields
In Brief |h 1 : Wino Worms
The worms, one might say, were slugs, their slithering slow and uncoordinated. They acted as if they were drunk, but instead scientists had artificially activated a channel thought to cause intoxication. Their pseudo binge helped researchers at University of California-San Francisco pinpoint for the first time a single brain protein that probably accounts for most of the intoxicating effects of alcohol. The discovery, reported in the December 12 issue of the journal Cell, could lead to development of drugs to make heavy drinkers lose their taste for alcohol or even quickly sober up. New drugs could block a channel that slows down brain activity, leading to drunken behavior. Drugs to treat alcoholism, naltrexone for example, have a significant effect on a small percentage of alcoholics. A drug targeting the newly discovered mechanism could help millions more. -Susan Brink
This story appears in the December 22, 2003 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.