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Fresh gullies have appeared in dunes inside this Martian crater within the past three years.
Mars Looks Lively
ASTRONOMY—Sightings of
shifting sand dunes,
rolling boulders, and a
dwindling polar ice cap
in the past year demon-
strate that the Red
Planet is a far more dy-
namic world than sci-
entists suspected.
NASA’s orbiting Mars
Global Surveyor revealed
fresh gullies as long as
three football fields on a
dune west of the Hellas
Basin. The same slope
was smooth and un-
blemished in 2002. Sci-
entists suspect that
carbon dioxide trapped
beneath the surface dur-
ing winter vaporized
when temperatures rose,
releasing gas and causing
sand to pour down the
dune’s face. The probe
also photographed
dozens of boulders that
had tumbled down a five-
mile-wide crater, goug-
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ing shallow troughs not
seen a year before. Possi-
ble causes include wind
and seismic activity, al-
though Mars’s atmos-
phere is just
one-hundredth as dense
as Earth’s, and researchers
have not yet found reli-
able evidence of
Marsquakes. Meanwhile,
carbon dioxide deposits
at the south pole have
dwindled for three con-
secutive summers, sug-
gesting long-term climate
change is under way.
None of these sight-
ings would be possible if
not for the extraordinary
durability of Mars
Global Surveyor, which
has been orbiting the
planet since 1997. Mean-
while, the Opportunity
and Spirit rovers, which
landed in January 2004,
have kept rolling long
past their predicted shelf
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life of 90 days. In Sep-
tember Spirit completed
a 14-month climb up
Husband Hill in Gusev
Crater and sent back a
panorama of weathered
rocks containing details
of past Mars environ-
ments. “Everyone is
amazed at the longevity,
excited about the results,
and perhaps a little
tired,” says Michael
Meyer, chief scientist of
NASA’s Mars Explo-
ration Program.
Next up: the Mars Re-
connaissance Orbiter,
launched last August 12,
enters Mars orbit in
March. Its radar sounder
will seek buried water,
while its camera will
map features as small as
a coffee table, aiding the
search for potential habi-
tats of past or present
life. “Stay tuned,” says
Meyer. —Jack Kelley
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HIV Attacks
Gut First
MEDICINE—For more than a
decade, scientists have tracked
the insidious progression of HIV
by measuring the amount of virus
in a patient’s blood. Over a pe-
riod of years, the replication of
the virus gradually and steadily
destroys the immune system’s
defenses—or so it was thought.
In April two studies of simian im-
munodeficiency virus, a kin of
HIV that infects monkeys, re-
ported that the virus swiftly in-
fects and decimates key immune
cells in the gut within days, not
years, of infection.“This basically
changes our whole view of the
pathogenesis of HIV infection,”
says Daniel Douek, chief of the
Human Immunology Section at
the National Institutes of Health’s
Vaccine Research Center.
Virologists have long known
that HIV infects and kills CD4+
T cells, which mediate the body’s
immune response to viruses.
What has emerged over the past
few years is that the virus thrives
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HIV-positive gut (top) lacks immune cells seen in HIV-free gut.
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not only in the blood and the
lymph system but also in mu-
cosal tissues, which are rich in
immune cells. The mucosae line
parts of the body, such as the
mouth, nose, and rectum, that
are exposed to the environment.
The gut, the largest of the mu-
cosal tissues, harbors most of
the body’s CD4+ T cells.
“What we now know is that
within the first few weeks of in-
fection, probably two to three
weeks, the majority of those cells
are depleted by HIV infection,”
says Douek.About half the T cells
were wiped out over just four
days within the first two weeks
of infection. .
The findings have profound
implications for the control of HIV
infection. These results under-
score the importance of starting
antiretroviral therapy very early
in the infection. And they high-
light the importance of a vac-
cine that can protect mucosal
surfaces. —Apoorva Mandavilli
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Tests on simulators show that the likelihood of accidents increases if a driver is multitasking.
Why Stroke
Victims Can’t Make
Good Decisions
PSYCHOLOGY— Patients
who have suffered stroke
or head injuries often
lose the ability to make
good decisions. For in-
stance, they will make re-
peated bets on a
particular outcome, even
when the odds of win-
ning are obviously very
low. In July Michael Sad-
doris, a psychology grad-
uate student at Johns
Hopkins University,
helped pinpoint why.
Previous studies sug-
gested that the abnor-
malities occurred in a
brain area known as the
orbital frontal cortex.
To test how this part
of the brain functions
during decisionmaking,
Saddoris and his collab-
orators presented a task
to a group of normal rats
Cell Phones Simulate Premature Aging
and a group with dam-
age in this region: Both
groups had to figure out
which of two different
odors led to a sugary
treat and which to a bit-
ter one. “It’s like if you
saw a soda machine with
foreign writing on it,”
Saddoris explains.“You
might push one button
and get something really
odd, so you wouldn’t try
that again. But if you
came back the next day
and got something you
really liked, you’d push
that button again and
again.” In the same way,
the animals had to learn
to use the smell cue to
predict a particular out-
come.
The next step was to
reverse the cues for the
sweet and salty sub-
TECHNOLOGY—High-tech driving simulator to mea-
gadgets make it possible sure reaction times, psy-
for people to travel chologist David Strayer
through time . . . well, sort found teenagers have the
of. To leap forward 40 to greatest trouble combin-
50 years, merely talk on ing driving and talking,
a cell phone while cruis- but the problem affects
ing down the road. Re- all generations. “We see
search at the University that accident rates, if
of Utah shows that when you’re using a cell phone,
drivers between 18 and are about four times
25 chat on a cell phone, greater than if you’re not
their reactions to a brak- using a cell phone,” he
ing car resemble those of says. “Cell phones seem
a 65- to 74-year-old mo- to be a distraction across
torist with no such dis- the age range.”
tractions. Employing a —Kurt Repanshek
54
stances, then see how
long it took for the rats
to catch on. Those with
defective brain circuitry
had much more diffi-
culty figuring it out. Data
from electrodes im-
planted into their brains
offered a clue: Neurons
in the impaired rats fired
less in the presence of
odors. They weren’t able
to monitor the new cir-
cumstances and form
new associations.
Understanding how
the orbital frontal cor-
tex influences judgment
may lead to therapies.
“We’re not at the level of
using neuroprosthetics
or implants to affect de-
cision making yet, but it
might be possible to get
there,” Saddoris says.
—Elizabeth Svoboda
Which tie will it be today? Ask your orbital frontal cortex.
DISCOVER JANUARY 2006 2
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