Humans

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We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

  1. Psychology

    Babies lip-read before talking

    Tots acquire the gift of gab by matching adults’ mouth movements to spoken words.

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  2. Psychology

    Big score for the hot hand

    Hot hands exist in professional volleyball and influence game strategy.

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  3. Humans

    Bush meat can be a viral feast

    Monkeys and apes are considered edible game in many parts of Africa. As Africans have emigrated to other parts of the world, some have retained their love of this so-called bushmeat. A new study now finds that even when smoked, meat from nonhuman primates — from chimps to monkeys — can host potentially dangerous viruses. Smuggled imports confiscated at U.S. airports provided the samples tested in this investigation.

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  4. Tech

    Twitter kept up with Haiti cholera outbreak

    Epidemiologists find that social media can be used to track disease outbreaks as they happen, even in countries with little infrastructure.

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  5. Health & Medicine

    Study tracks booze’s buzz in the brain

    In both heavy and light drinkers, alcohol causes the release of morphinelike chemicals.

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  6. Health & Medicine

    Light pot smoking easy on lungs

    Infrequent marijuana users show a slight improvement in breathing capacity and middling smokers had no change, a 20-year study shows.

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  7. Psychology

    Europeans’ heartfelt ignorance

    Many people in nine countries don't know how to recognize or react to heart attacks and strokes.

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  8. Health & Medicine

    Drug gives rats booze-guzzling superpowers

    Rodents that consume alcohol along with a compound derived from an ancient herbal remedy get less drunk, recover faster and appear less prone to addiction.

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  9. Humans

    Insurance payouts point to climate change

    Natural disasters in 2011 exerted the costliest toll in history — a whopping $380 billion worth of losses from earthquakes, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, wildfires, tsunamis and more. Only a third of those costs were covered by insurance. And the tally ignores completely any expenses associated with sickness or injuries triggered by the disasters. And except for quake-related events, climate change appears to have played a role in the growing cost of disasters, insurers said.

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  10. Humans

    Botanists et al freed from Latin, paper

    As of January 1, people who classify new plant, algae and fungus species can do it in English and online.

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  11. Health & Medicine

    Brainy Ballplayers

    Elite athletes get their heads in the game.

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  12. Humans

    Bt: The lesson not learned

    The more things change, the more they stay the same, as a Dec. 29 Associated Press report on genetically engineered corn notes. Like déjà vu, this news story on emerging resistance to Bt toxin — a fabulously effective and popular insecticide to protect corn — brings to mind articles I encountered over the weekend while flipping through historic issues of Science News. More than a half-century ago, our magazine chronicled, real time, the emergence of resistance to DDT, the golden child of pest controllers worldwide. Now much the same thing is happening again with Bt, its contemporary agricultural counterpart. Will we never learn?

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