Humans
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Health & Medicine
Electric scooter injuries rose 222 percent in 4 years in the U.S.
Hospital admissions from accidents related to e-scooters grew from 2014 to 2018.
- Health & Medicine
Healthy babies exposed to Zika in the womb may suffer developmental delays
A small group of Zika-exposed children in Colombia who were born healthy missed milestones for movement and social interaction by 18 months of age.
- Health & Medicine
Injecting a TB vaccine into the blood, not the skin, boosts its effectiveness
Giving a high dose of a tuberculosis vaccine intravenously, instead of under the skin, improved its ability to protect against the disease in monkeys.
- Health & Medicine
A bioethicist says scientists owe clinical trial volunteers support
Researchers should be aware that many insurance policies do not cover experimental procedures, including side effects that may happen afterward.
- Health & Medicine
In a first, an Ebola vaccine wins approval from the FDA
U.S. approval of Ervebo, already deployed in an ongoing Ebola outbreak in Congo, bolsters efforts to prepare for future potential spread of the disease.
- Microbes
Airplane sewage may be helping antibiotic-resistant microbes spread
Along with drug-resistant E. coli, airplane sewage contains a diverse set of genes that let bacteria evade antibiotics.
- Humans
In some languages, love and pity get rolled into the same word
By studying semantic ties among words used to describe feelings in over 2,000 languages, researchers turned up cultural differences.
- Anthropology
Homo erectus’ last known appearance dates to roughly 117,000 years ago
New evidence helps resolve a debate over how long ago Home erectus survived in what’s now Indonesia, a study finds.
- Science & Society
These science claims from 2019 could be big deals — if true
Some of this year’s most tantalizing scientific finds aren’t yet ready for a “best of” list.
- Archaeology
DNA from 5,700-year-old ‘gum’ shows what one ancient woman may have looked like
From chewed birch pitch, scientists recovered DNA from an ancient woman and her mouth microbes and hazelnut and duck DNA from a meal she’d consumed.
- Health & Medicine
In 2019, a ketamine-based antidepressant raised hopes and concerns
Ketamine and related molecules might ease severe depression, but the drugs come with baggage.
- Health & Medicine
Vaping’s dangers loom large amid more than 50 U.S. deaths this year
Lung injuries and deaths linked to vaping in 2019 are a sobering indication of the dangers of e-cigarettes as teen use continues to rise.
