Humans
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We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Humans
Afghanistan on 240 incidents a week
A computer simulation forecasts insurgent activity by analyzing U.S. military logs released on WikiLeaks.
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- Health & Medicine
White dental fillings may impair kids’ behavior
Effects seen only for fillings that used bis-GMA, a resin derived from bisphenol A.
By Janet Raloff - Health & Medicine
Catching a Cancer
The official figure for the percentage of human cancers caused by viruses is around 20 percent — but most experts concede that number is largely an educated guess
By Laura Beil - Humans
Early Americans took two tool tracks
Creators of separate spearhead styles colonized North America more than 13,000 years ago.
By Bruce Bower - Humans
BLOG: Humans’ not-so singular status
Reporting from the Euroscience Open Forum in Dublin, editor in chief Tom Siegfried discusses how neuroscience and artificial intelligence research are challenging ideas of selfhood and humankind's specialness.
- Health & Medicine
Proliferation protein goes rogue in lung cancer
Rac1b might promote malignancy, could be a target for treatment.
By Nathan Seppa - Health & Medicine
Memories clutter brain in amnesia
Complex patterns slow down object recognition in patients with disorder.
- Humans
Warning to bats: Cuddle not
Ecologist Kate Langwig of Boston University and her colleagues want Eastern bats to listen up: No more cuddling — at least during hibernation. Just keep those wings to yourselves.
By Janet Raloff - Humans
Apocalypse, not so fast
Guatemalan find suggests mention of a date far in the future served a Maya king’s immediate needs.
By Bruce Bower - Health & Medicine
Some brains may be primed for pain
When people keep hurting long after an injury heals, a process similar to addiction may be at work.
- Health & Medicine
Body and Brain
Good touch, bad touch A leg caress can delight or feel totally skeevy, depending on who’s doing the caressing. A touch’s emotional baggage can be seen in the brain’s initial response to that touch, scientists report in the June 19 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Heterosexual men’s somatosensory cortices, brain regions that detect […]