Humans

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We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

  1. Psychology

    Babies catch words early

    Vocabulary learning starts when babies can barely babble.

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  2. Health & Medicine

    Just two cells to make memories last

    A pair of neurons in fly's brain is essential to long-term information storage and retrieval.

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  3. Psychology

    Vodka delivers shot of creativity

    Alcohol intoxication raises men’s performance on a test of verbal ingenuity.

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  4. Life

    Cancer drug may have Alzheimer’s benefits

    Medication helps the brain clear a plaque-forming protein associated with dementia.

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  5. Health & Medicine

    Tai chi helps Parkinson’s patients balance

    The controlled movement of the Chinese martial art can improve patients' coordination and limit falls, a study finds.

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  6. Humans

    Numbers warn of looming collapses

    Mathematical tools help researchers predict when systems are about to change dramatically.

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  7. Humans

    Faulty comparisons

    Is anyone else disturbed by the following description: Scientists are reporting development of a new form of buckypaper, which eliminates a major drawback of these sheets of carbon nanotubes — 50,000 times thinner than a human hair, 10 times lighter than steel, but up to 250 times stronger . . .

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  8. Health & Medicine

    Addicts and siblings share brain features

    The finding suggests that diminished self-control and other behaviors may have a genetic component.

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  9. Chemistry

    Muscle massage may speed healing

    Rubbing sore, overworked areas trips anti-inflammatory switches in the tissue that might speed healing and ease pain.

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  10. Humans

    Arsenic-based life finding fails follow-up

    Tests see no evidence to confirm a bold 2010 claim that some microbes can incorporate the normally toxic element into their cellular machinery.

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  11. Health & Medicine

    Bird flu leaves tracks in brain

    H5N1 infection might make survivors vulnerable to Parkinson’s or other neurological disorders, a study in mice indicates.

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  12. Humans

    Predatory pythons shift Everglades ecology

    As invasive snakes expand territory, some mammal populations drop by more than 90 percent within a decade.

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