Uncategorized

  1. 19354

    It is quite sad that your otherwise-excellent publication systematically fails to report error bars in your reports. Time and again I read articles and am left wondering whether the effect reported is even statistically significant. As just one example, this article said that the rate of subsequent infection from breast milk dropped from 12 percent […]

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  2. Health & Medicine

    Treatment helps newborns avoid HIV

    Giving healthy newborns whose mothers are infected with HIV a combination of anti-HIV drugs shortly after birth makes the infants less likely to contract the virus through breastfeeding.

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  3. Tech

    Sweet-toothed microbe tapped for power

    Using a newly discovered bacterium that both frees electrons from sugars and injects those charges straight into electric circuits, scientists have created a fuel cell that converts carbohydrates to electricity with extraordinary efficiency.

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  4. Earth

    Gulf War vets face elevated ALS risk

    Two studies suggest that veterans of the 1991 Gulf War are at elevated risk of developing the fatal neurodegenerative condition amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) compared with other military personnel and with the general population.

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  5. Health & Medicine

    Balance benefits from noisy insoles

    Sending subliminal vibrations to nerves on the bottoms of feet helps people, especially the elderly, keep their balance.

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  6. Earth

    Flame retardants take a vacation

    The lifetime in blood of flame- retarding diphenyl ethers, now-ubiquitous pollutants, ranges from 2 weeks to 2 years, Swedish researchers find.

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  7. Health & Medicine

    Cocoa puffs up insulin in blood

    Eating foods flavored with cocoa powder as opposed to other flavorings stimulates surplus production of the sugar-processing hormone insulin, but the metabolic implications of the finding aren’t yet known.

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  8. Earth

    New PCBs?

    New studies have begun linking toxic risks with a ubiquitous family of flame retardants.

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  9. Chemistry

    The Nature of Things

    An earth scientist's proposed alternative periodic table of elements is emblematic of the growing desire among scientists to recast this 130-year-old chart.

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  10. From the October 21, 1933, issue

    COULD YOU DO THIS AT 18 MONTHS? Could you climb a smooth slide as the baby on the front cover does when you were a year and a half old? Of course not. But perhaps you could have, had you been given the training that 18-month-old Johnny, pictured in one of his favorite exercises, has […]

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  11. Loss of Smell

    To many people, the ability to sense all sorts of odors is a normal occurrence and something that they take for granted. Some people, however, do suffer from a loss or disturbance of a sense of smell–a condition known as anosmia. Created by Helen Gatcum and Tim Jacob of Cambridge University, these Web pages provide […]

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  12. Humans

    Letters

    Letters from the Oct. 18, 2003, issue of Science News.

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