All Stories
- Health & Medicine
Ear piercings cause illness, disfigurement
Piercing the upper-ear cartilage under nonsterile conditions can leave a person vulnerable to a Pseudomonas aeruginosa infection, as happened in Oregon in 2000.
- Animals
Road rage keeps ants moving smoothly
Streams of ants manage to avoid traffic gridlock by a bit of strategic pushing and shoving.
- Health & Medicine
Heart patients gain from steep cholesterol drop
Heart patients can lessen their risk of a heart attack and increase their odds of survival by aggressively reducing harmful low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol in their blood.
- Physics
Complexity by way of simplicity
Researchers have demonstrated a new way to simplify some intricate patterns whose extreme complexity has convinced theoretical physicist Stephen Wolfram that traditional science can't explain many important natural phenomena.
- Anthropology
Grannies give gift of longer lives
Data from two 18th- and 19th-century farming communities supports the theory that child care assistance from grandmothers has contributed to the evolution of extended human longevity.
- Health & Medicine
Drug for migraines helps some patients
An experimental drug that slows blood flow in the brain knocks out migraine headaches in some people.
- Animals
Hornbills know which monkey calls to heed
Hornbills can tell the difference between two kinds of alarm calls given by monkeys.
- Planetary Science
Revisiting a forgotten planet
Engineers are readying a NASA spacecraft for a May 11 launch to Mercury, one of the least-explored planets in the solar system.
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The word love needs to be more carefully defined in the study described in this article. Love may also mean finding the economic resources to give a child a better future. Wolf’s description of Taiwanese mothers giving their children away when “socially acceptable alternatives” were available is reminiscent of our society’s advice to young unwed […]
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Mother and Child Disunion
Data on extensive giveaways of daughters by their mothers in northern Taiwan a century ago may challenge influential theories of innate maternal sentiments.
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The Bad Seed
Researchers are racing to identify tumor-forming stem cells in skin, lung, pancreatic, and many other cancers.
- Earth
Smoking out a source of painful menses
Breathing in secondhand smoke may contribute to the development of menstrual cramps.
