John Travis

All Stories by John Travis

  1. 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.

  2. Growth factors make an egg grow up

    Scientists have identified growth factors that enable a female mammal's eggs to mature.

  3. Health & Medicine

    Drug fails in autism study

    In the most extensive test so far of its capability to treat autism, the controversial drug secretin has failed to help children with the neurological disorder.

  4. Insect receptor for sweat creates buzz

    A sweat-sensing cell-surface protein allows female mosquitoes to target human skin.

  5. Hot or cold? Debate on protein heats up

    Wasabi and horseradish trigger the same pain-signaling receptor on nerve cells.

  6. Pushing Cancer over the Edge: Compounds trigger tumor-cell suicide

    Compounds that free cancer cells to commit suicide slow tumor growth.

  7. Reef Relations

    The discovery of humanlike genes in coral means that the common ancestor of both humans and coral was more complex than previously assumed.

  8. Health & Medicine

    Viruses depend on shocking proteins

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

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

    Scientists lobby for a chimpanzee genome project.

  11. 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.

  12. Fear Not

    Scientists find that facing your fears enables you to suppress them.