News
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Rare mutations tied to schizophrenia
Individual-specific DNA deletions and duplications, many located in genes involved in brain development, occur in an unusually large percentage of people with schizophrenia.
- Materials Science
Squid beaks are hardly soft
Water softens squid beaks toward their base, so they don't cut into the squid's own soft tissue.
- Earth
Tibetan Plateau history gets a lift
The Tibetan Plateau formed when the Indian and Eurasian plates collided, but scientists may have had the order of events wrong.
- Health & Medicine
New drug curbs rheumatoid arthritis in adults, children
The experimental drug tocilizumab quells rheumatoid arthritis in adults and children by inhibiting an inflammatory compound called interleukin-6.
- Health & Medicine
Microbes weigh in on obesity
The kinds of microbes living in an infant's gut may influence weight gain later in childhood.
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High CO2—a gourmet boon for crop pest
Relatively high concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide weaken soybean defenses against Japanese beetles.
- Animals
Farm girl has the chops
The first big family tree presenting the history of fungus-growing ants shows the leaf-cutters as the newest branch, and a very recent one at that.
- Health & Medicine
Mouse, Heal Thyself: Therapeutic cloning from a mouse’s own cells
Mice with a Parkinson's disease–like condition benefited from receiving new nerve cells made through therapeutic cloning of their own cells.
- Health & Medicine
Still Waters: Skin disease microbe tracked to ponds, swamps
Scientists establish pond water as the natural environment of Mycobacterium ulcerans, the cause of the skin disease Buruli ulcer.
- Materials Science
Live Another Day: African insect survives drought in glassy state
When dehydrated, the larvae of an African fly replace the water in their cells with a sugar, which solidifies and helps keep cellular structures intact.
- Anthropology
European Roots: Human ancestors go back in time in Spanish cave
Excavations of a cave in northern Spain have yielded a fossil jaw and tooth that provide the first solid evidence that human ancestors reached Western Europe more than 1 million years ago.
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Calorie Kick: Desire for sweets not only a matter of taste
Chemical fireworks in the brain's reward system explode in response to calories, independent of flavor, suggests a new study of mice.
