Humans
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Neuroscience
Brain features may reveal if placebo pills could treat chronic pain
Researchers narrow in on how to identify people who find placebos effective for treating persistent pain.
- Anthropology
Butchered bird bones put humans in Madagascar 10,500 years ago
Humans reached the island near Africa 6,000 years earlier than thought, raising questions about how its megafauna went extinct.
- Chemistry
A new antibiotic uses sneaky tactics to kill drug-resistant superbugs
Scientists have developed a molecule that kills off bacteria that are resistant to existing antibiotics.
- Archaeology
This South African cave stone may bear the world’s oldest drawing
The Stone Age line design could have held special meaning for its makers, a new study finds.
- Health & Medicine
Marijuana use among pregnant women is rising, and so are concerns
Pediatricians are urging caution as data show more pregnant women are using marijuana. More research is urgently needed on the drug’s effects during pregnancy.
- Health & Medicine
50 years ago, a pessimistic view for heart transplants
Surgeon Christiaan Barnard performed the first successful human-to-human heart transplant in 1967. In 1968, he predicted that patients would survive five years at best. Fortunately, he was wrong.
- Genetics
German skeletons hint that medieval warrior groups recruited from afar
Graveyard finds may come from an ancient European warrior household with political pull.
- Health & Medicine
Teens born from assisted pregnancies may have higher blood pressure
Kids born from reproductive technologies such as in vitro fertilization are susceptible to high blood pressure as adolescents, a small study finds.
- Psychology
Huge ‘word gap’ holding back low-income children may not exist after all
The claim that poor children hear fewer words than kids from higher-income families faces a challenge.
- Health & Medicine
CRISPR gene editing relieves muscular dystrophy symptoms in dogs
Scientists have used CRISPR’s molecular scissors in beagle puppies to repair a genetic mutation that causes muscular dystrophy.
- Health & Medicine
Officials raise Puerto Rico’s death toll from Hurricane Maria to nearly 3,000 people
Nearly 3,000 Puerto Ricans died due to Hurricane Maria as of February 2018, according to a new report.
- Health & Medicine
The United States and Brazil top the list of nations with the most gun deaths
Globally, the estimated number of gun deaths due to homicides, suicides and unintentional injuries went up from 1990 to 2016.
