SCIENCE BRIEFS
 

07/28/2003

From Staff Reports

Make a mental note: Music lessons may boost children's ability to remember words.

Scientists in Hong Kong tested 90 right-handed boys, half of them members of the school orchestra program who had regular music lessons. Compared with peers lacking such training, the musicians scored higher on verbal memory tests.

But music lessons don't improve all memory, the scientists said: Both groups scored similarly on visual memory tests. This suggests the lessons enhance the brain's left temporal lobe – key in verbal but not visual recall, the team wrote this month in Neuropsychology.

A year later, boys who had stopped music training did not show gains in verbal memory, while those who began or continued such training did.

Karen Patterson

Product of first stars found in distant galaxy

The most distant object known in the universe contains atoms forged in the hearts of the very first stars, astronomers have found.

Radiotelescopes in New Mexico and France have detected carbon monoxide gas in a galaxy nearly 13 billion light-years from Earth. Light coming from the galaxy appears as it was when the universe was just 1/16 its present age.

Only the lightest elements, mainly hydrogen and helium, were created in the big bang; elements such as carbon and oxygen, which make up carbon monoxide, must have been synthesized inside very early stars, scientists wrote in last week's Nature.

Fabian Walter of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and colleagues conclude that the earliest galaxies in the universe must have created heavy elements within a few hundred million years after the universe's birth.

Alexandra Witze

Clump of cells found that tells tails to form

Dogs wouldn't wag and fish wouldn't swim without a tiny clump of cells found in the youngest of animal embryos, a new study suggests.

In the latest issue of the journal Nature, scientists from France report on a special group of cells that directs the formation of the tail in animals.

Scientists had already discovered a clump of cells that directed head formation. In the new research the scientists experimented with the other clump of cells, this time creating a fish with two tails.

The new work fills a long-standing gap in scientists' understanding of how animals develop.

Sue Goetinck Ambrose