Humans
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Health & Medicine
This tick may play a part in gumming up your arteries
Having antibodies to a sugar tied to red-meat allergy is associated with more plaque in the artery walls, a small study shows.
- Anthropology
Conflict reigns over the history and origins of money
Thousands of years ago, money took different forms as a means of debt payment, archaeologists and anthropologists say.
- Anthropology
How an ancient stone money system works like cryptocurrency
Money has ancient and mysterious pedigrees that go way beyond coins.
- Health & Medicine
A new Ebola species has been found in bats in Sierra Leone
A sixth species of Ebola has been found, but we don’t know if it can cause disease in humans.
- Health & Medicine
Lowering blood pressure may help the brain
Aggressively treating high blood pressure had a modest positive effect on the development of an early form of memory loss.
- Health & Medicine
40 years after the first IVF baby, a look back at the birth of a new era
Like many scientific breakthroughs, IVF took persistence and luck in the lab.
- Health & Medicine
What leech gut bacteria can tell us about drug resistance
A bacteria found in leeches becomes drug resistant after only a small exposure to common antibiotics.
- Health & Medicine
Pediatricians warn against chemical additives in food for kids
Common food additives found in meats, plastic packaging or metal cans may contain chemicals that harm children’s health.
- Earth
You’re living in a new geologic age. It’s called the Meghalayan
The newly defined Meghalayan Age began at the same time as a global, climate-driven event that led to human upheavals.
- Health & Medicine
How a variation on Botox could be used to treat pain
Drugs that incorporate modified botulinum toxin provide long-term pain relief, a study in mice finds.
- Health & Medicine
‘The Poisoned City’ chronicles Flint’s water crisis
A new book examines how lead ended up in Flint’s water and resulted in a prolonged public health disaster.
- Health & Medicine
Publicity over a memory test Trump took could skew its results
Many media outlets reporting on President Trump’s cognitive assessment test could make it harder for doctors to use the exam to spot dementia.
