News in Brief
- Neuroscience
Pulses to the brain bring memory gains
The ability to associate faces with words is boosted when an outer part of the brain is stimulated, a study shows.
- Health & Medicine
Human tests of experimental Ebola vaccine set to start
NIH and NIAID have announced that human tests of an experimental vaccine against Ebola virus will begin in early September.
- Life
Gut bacteria may prevent food allergies
In mice, gut bacteria blocked food from seeping out of the intestines and triggering an immune reaction in the bloodstream.
- Animals
Corals, fish know bad reefs by their whiff
Compounds drifting off certain overgrown seaweeds discourage young corals and fish from settling in failing reefs.
- Anthropology
Richard III ate like a king before biting the dust
King Richard III’s brief reign included a sudden shift to eating fancy food and drink.
- Materials Science
Magnets get flipped by light
Controlling magnetism with lasers could lead to faster computer hard drives.
- Animals
Hummingbirds evolved a strange taste for sugar
While other birds seem to lack the ability to taste sugar, hummingbirds detect sweetness using a repurposed sensor that normally responds to savory flavors.
- Animals
Olinguito’s bio built by crowd-sourcing
Crowd-sourcing fleshes out the bio of little-known raccoon relative, the olinguito.
- Health & Medicine
Elderly benefit from high-dose flu shot
High-dose vaccine may offer people age 65 and older improved protection against the flu.
- Neuroscience
Prosthesis uses swinging arms to tell legs when to step
Device creates artificial neural connection that could help paralyzed people walk.
- Oceans
Mercury at ocean surface may have tripled since preindustrial times
Questions remain over dangers of toxic metal in environment.
- Planetary Science
Saturn moon’s geysers draw water from subsurface sea
More than six years of Cassini data indicate that the water jets on the surface of Saturn’s moon Enceladus connect to deep-ocean reservoirs via expanding cracks in surface ice.
