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- Health & Medicine
Food Forays
Ever wonder what the Vikings ate on their lengthy voyages to new lands? What pioneers cooked on their treks along the Oregon Trail? Who invented the potato chip? The fascinating answers to these and many other food-related questions can be found at the Food Timeline, a collection of links to related Web pages, compiled by […]
By Science News - Health & Medicine
Diets to Ward Off Diabetes
Some 16 million people in the United States have type 2 diabetes, which used to be called the disorder’s “adult onset” form. In fact, its incidence has been skyrocketing, climbing by nearly 50 percent over the past decade alone. Even children are now developing type 2 diabetes, which is characterized by the body’s resistance to […]
By Janet Raloff - Health & Medicine
Natural fluoride isn’t quite enough
In the absence of a public water-fluoridation program in eastern Germany, natural background concentrations of fluoride in drinking water affect children’s dental health.
By Ben Harder - Earth
Child-care sites, health threats
Federal agencies have completed the first national study of lead, pesticides, and allergens in U.S. child-care facilities.
By Ben Harder - Animals
Hawkmoths can still see colors at night
For the first time, scientists have found detailed evidence than an animal—a hawkmoth—can see color by starlight.
By Susan Milius - Tech
Resistancefree wire takes long jump
A wire-making company has demonstrated a process that yields potentially inexpensive, high-current superconducting wires about 10 times longer than previous prototypes.
By Peter Weiss -
19203
Many people who are exploring the possible connection between childhood vaccines and autism claim that the culprit is not the vaccines themselves, but the mercury-containing preservative thimerosal. Does the Danish MMR vaccine contain it? Anne SealsSumner, Wash. Thimerosal has never been used in the MMR vaccine, either in the United States or in Denmark .–B. […]
By Science News - Health & Medicine
Study exonerates childhood vaccine
A nationwide study in Denmark provides strong evidence that a childhood vaccine once blamed for some cases of autism plays no role in the development of that neurological disorder.
By Ben Harder - Astronomy
Galactic cannibalism strikes again
Astronomers have discovered the remains of a tiny galaxy that was swallowed by the galaxy Centaurus A only a few hundred million years ago.
By Ron Cowen - Earth
El Niños came more often in Middle Ages
Analyses of layered sediments from a South American lake suggest that the worldwide warm spells known as El Niños occurred more frequently about 1,200 years ago, when Europe was entering the Middle Ages, than they do today.
By Sid Perkins - Paleontology
Forged fossil is a fish-eating fowl
Detailed analyses of Archaeoraptor, a forged fossil once thought to be a missing link between dinosaurs and birds, reveal that the majority of that fake comes from an ancient, fish-eating bird.
By Sid Perkins - Animals
Mad Deer Disease?
Chronic wasting disease, once just an obscure brain ailment of deer and elk in a small patch of the West, is turning up in new places and raising troubling questions about risks.
By Susan Milius