Dead zone to expand

Researchers say the largest dead zone measured was 8,894 square miles in 2002. It was about 7,900 square miles last year.

Progress made on bird flu vaccine

The first experimental bird flu vaccine made from lab-grown cells instead of chicken eggs shows promise in blocking the highly lethal virus, scientists reported Thursday.

The vaccine could reduce dependence on the antiquated system of using millions of eggs to make flu vaccines and cut production time to as little as 12 weeks, according to maker Baxter International Inc.

Results of mid-stage testing of the vaccine, Celvapan, showed two shots produced an immune response considered strong enough to protect 76% of healthy adults from both the H5N1 Vietnam strain it targets and the related Hong Kong strain; it appeared to protect 45% from a third, Indonesian strain, according to the report in the New England Journal of Medicine.

A little respect for little Pluto

The official group that names objects in the solar system is calling all distant dwarf planets "plutoids" after the planet that was demoted to dwarf status.

The International Astronomical Union has created a new category for objects that circle the sun and are too small to be considered planets, but are big enough to have their own gravity. Plutoids must also be farther from the sun than Neptune.

The astronomical union, which is meeting in Oslo, Norway, raised a cosmic fuss two years ago when it demoted Pluto. There are only two plutoids: Pluto and Eris.

Solar probe's run to end in July

The Ulysses solar probe will cease operations around July 1 after nearly 18 years in outer space, NASA announced Thursday.

The U.S.-European spacecraft has been suffering from a decline in its plutonium power, which has dwindled to the point where thruster fuel soon will freeze up.

Ulysses already has surpassed its expected lifetime by almost four times, traveling 5.4 billion miles since its launch aboard space shuttle Discovery in 1990. The $250 million spacecraft studied the sun, in particular its poles and the heliosphere, the region around the sun carved out by the solar wind.

Smoking linked to mid-life woes

Middle-aged adults who smoke tended to perform poorly on tests of memory and reasoning compared with nonsmokers, French researchers said Monday.

Analyzing previously collected data on about 5,000 British civil servants, the researchers found those who smoked were more likely than people who never smoked to be in the lowest-performing of five groups in tests of memory, reasoning, vocabulary and verbal fluency.

Smoking was associated with mental decline in middle age, as it is with dementia and a host of physical ills later in life, they reported in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine.

Deer gives life to unicorn fable

A deer with a single horn in the center of its head -- much like the fabled, mythical unicorn -- has been spotted in a nature preserve in Italy, park officials said Wednesday.

The 1-year-old Roe Deer -- nicknamed "Unicorn" -- was born in captivity in the research center's park in the Tuscan town of Prato, near Florence, said Gilberto Tozzi, director of the Center of Natural Sciences in Prato. The deer is believed to have been born with a genetic flaw; his twin has two horns.

"This shows that even in past times, there could have been animals with this anomaly," Tozzi said by telephone. "It's not like they dreamed it up."

Burial site reveals Rome's laborers

First-century burial grounds near Rome's main airport are yielding a rare look into how ancient longshoremen and other manual workers did backbreaking jobs, archaeologists said Monday.

The necropolis, which spanned the late 1st century into the 2nd century, near the town of Ponte Galeria came to light last year when customs police noticed a clandestine dig by grave robbers seeking valuable ancient artifacts, Rome's archaeology office said.

Most of the 300 skeletons unearthed were male, and many of them showed signs of years of heavy work: joint and tendon inflammation, compressed vertebrae, hernias and spinal problems, archaeologists said.