Humans
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Health & Medicine
Coffee serves up surprising health benefits
Reporting on the current state of research allows readers to see beyond the single, sometimes conflicting public health messages that medical studies produce.
- Anthropology
Handed-down tales tell of ancient sea level rise
Australian Aborigines tell tales of actual, ancient sea-level rises, a contested study finds.
- Health & Medicine
Isaac Kinde: Finding cancer via altered genes
Isaac Kinde helped create a technology that can spot cancers early to give patients a better chance at survival.
- Health & Medicine
For kids learning new words, it’s all about context
By recording the first three years of life, researchers get hints about a child’s language development.
- Health & Medicine
Study finds benefits from lowering blood pressure, but questions remain
Preliminary results from NIH clinical trial suggest that lower blood pressure is better, but scientists have not yet published the data and open questions remain.
- Health & Medicine
Coffee reveals itself as an unlikely elixir
Coffee is earning a reputation as a health tonic, reducing risk for a long list of ailments and even lowering death rates.
- Health & Medicine
In 1965, hopes were high for artificial hearts
Developing artificial hearts took longer than expected, and improved devices are still under investigation.
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- Environment
Home fires, farm fumes are leading causes of air-pollution deaths
Deadly air pollution comes from surprising sources, but toxicity of different types is still up in the air.
- Health & Medicine
Backwash from nursing babies may trigger infection fighters
A nursing baby’s saliva may get slurped back into mom’s breast, where it stimulates an immune response.
- Psychology
People find the skin of others’ softer than their own
Humans perceive other peoples’ skin as softer and smoother than their own because touch is important in social bonding, researchers suggest.
- Archaeology
‘Superhenge’ once lined Stonehenge neighborhood
A row of massive, now-buried stones once bordered a site near Stonehenge.
