Humans
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Health & Medicine
Retina can help reveal brain health
Among older women, diseased blood vessels at the back of the eye are linked to lower scores on mental tests and other signs of possible ministrokes.
- Humans
Teens win big at science competition
The top awards in the 2012 Intel Science Talent Search go to young scientists working on cancer, innovative sources of energy and behavioral genetics.
- Psychology
Pi master’s storied recall
Remembering more than 60,000 consecutive numbers takes exhaustive practice at spinning yarns.
- Humans
Science competition finalists go public
Public day allows high school students to present their projects.
- Health & Medicine
A dash of marrow helps kidney transplant
A new approach enables researchers to wean some patients who receive poorly matched kidneys off immune-suppressing drugs
- Health & Medicine
Excess salt may stiffen heart vessels
As sodium in diet increases, a coronary risk factor independent of blood pressure escalates, according to a study in middle-aged U.S. men.
- Humans
Technique may reveal where it all began
A new strategy overcomes a distance quandary as it tracks the origins of widespread phenomena — from an E. coli outbreak to a fad.
- Humans
Modern era brings death to words
An analysis of books published over two centuries shows how words are born or succumb to shifting social and technological influences.
- Psychology
Kids flex cultural muscles
Young children, but not chimps or monkeys, generate collective leaps of knowledge.
- Life
Pollutants long gone, but disease carries on
Even without new exposures, various chemicals can impact DNA and cause illness across at least three subsequent generations, rat study finds.
- Anthropology
Frozen mummy’s genetic blueprints unveiled
DNA study reveals the 5,300-year-old Iceman had brown eyes, Lyme disease and links to modern-day Corsicans and Sardinians.
- Life
Brain cells know which way you’ll bet
Activity of nerve cells in a key brain structure reveals how people will bet in a card game.
