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Medicinal mirth gets research rebuke
Little scientific evidence to date supports any of the purported physical health benefits of laughter and humor, a psychologist concludes.
By Bruce Bower -
Health & MedicineChemotherapy leads to bone loss
In women with early-stage breast cancer, malfunctioning ovaries and significant bone loss can occur within 6 months of chemotherapy treatment.
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Health & MedicineInflammation linked to diabetes
Women who go on to develop diabetes seem to have signs of widespread, low-level inflammation years before they have symptoms of the disease.
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From the August 8, 1931 issue
TWO ARISTOCRATIC LADIES EMERGE FROM RETIREMENT There is something about newly-emerged silkworm moths that makes one think of the ladies of Cathay or Cipangu, long ago and far away, clothed in silk spun by ancestors of todays silk worms. In the cover picture of this weeks Science News Letter, Cornelia Clarke has made an admirable […]
By Science News -
Health & MedicineAncient Estrogen
A jawless fish ancestor may have revealed the most ancient of hormones and how current hormones evolved from it.
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I was distressed to read that Science News thinks there are no steroid hormone receptors in insects. Granted, their reproduction is not regulated by steroids, but ecdysone, the molting hormone, is certainly a steroid. There is some evidence that juvenile hormone, the hormone that regulates development and sometimes reproduction, acts through a steroidlike-receptor pathway. Other […]
By Science News -
AstronomyAnybody Out There?
This elaborate Web site brings together a wide variety of resources devoted to the question of life in the universe. Mounted by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and other European agencies, the site serves as home base for a competition aimed at eliciting responses from European students to the possibility of extraterrestrial life. […]
By Science News -
EcosystemsFish stocking may transmit toad disease
Hatchery-raised trout can transfer a deadly fungus to western toads, bolstering the view that fish stocking may play a role in amphibian population declines.
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PaleontologyNeandertals, humans may have grown apart
A controversial fossil analysis finds that the skulls of Neandertals and humans grew in markedly different ways.
By Bruce Bower -
AnimalsRoach gals get less choosy as time goes by
As their first reproductive peak wanes, female cockroaches become more like male ones, willing to mate with any potential partner that moves.
By Susan Milius -
PaleontologyStudy picks new site for dinosaur nostrils
A new analysis of fossils and living animals suggests that most dinosaurs' nostrils occurred at locations toward the tip of their snout rather than farther up on their face, a concept that may change scientists' views of the animals' physiology and behavior.
By Sid Perkins -
AstronomyGround-based telescope detects star’s corona
Astronomers using a ground-based telescope have for the first time observed near-ultraviolet light from the corona of a star other than our sun.
By Ron Cowen