John Travis

All Stories by John Travis

  1. Health & Medicine

    Gene helps alcohol help the heart

    A genetic study indicates that moderate consumption of alcohol helps keep the heart healthy.

  2. Health & Medicine

    Fetal cells pop up in mom’s thyroid

    A woman's thyroid gland contains male cells, suggesting that cells from her son passed into her when he was a fetus.

  3. Model explains bubonic plague’s persistence

    A computer model of bubonic plague suggests rats can harbor the disease for years before a human epidemic breaks out.

  4. Pioneers of brain-cell signaling earn Nobel

    Three neuroscientists who delved into the ways brain cells receive and respond to signals from other cells won this year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

  5. Health & Medicine

    HIV outwits immune system, again

    The AIDS virus uses immune system proteins to hitch rides on the antibody factories known as B cells, possibly helping it find potential host cells.

  6. Health & Medicine

    Aging protein saps muscle strength

    Proteins crucial for muscle strength begin to function poorly as rats get older.

  7. Human, Mouse, Rat . . . What’s Next?

    Scientists lobby for a chimpanzee genome project.

  8. Teams implicate new gene in prostate cancer

    A newly discovered gene may, in rare cases, cause prostate cancer or, more commonly, raise a man's risk of developing the disease.

  9. Health & Medicine

    Drugs slow aging in worms

    Drugs that defuse so-called free radicals lengthen a worm's life span by more than 50 percent.

  10. Health & Medicine

    Viruses depend on shocking proteins

    To replicate within a cell, a bird virus must force the cell to make certain proteins.

  11. Snap, Crackle, and Feel Good?

    Magnetic fields that map the brain may also treat its disorders.

  12. Hormone dulls a tongue’s taste for sweets

    The hormone leptin may suppress the tongue's ability to taste sugary substances.