Humans
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Health & Medicine
Annual Meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of America and the HIV Medicine Association
The mystery of HIV elite controllers, a vaccine against C. difficile, blood transfusion and infection, and contaminated public surfaces.
- Health & Medicine
Measles cases up in U.S. and Canada
Both countries report 2011 to be the worst year since the mid-1990s.
- Humans
Sarah’s tale of Arctic warming
Over a half-century or so, Sarah James' town of some 150 Athabascan Indians has watched as the formerly extreme but fairly predictable climate in this amazingly remote region of inland Alaska has become warmer and more erratic. Overall, that’s definitely not been a change for the better, she says. James ventured to South Florida this week — and the Society of Environmental Journalists’ annual meeting — to describe what it’s like to weather life on the frontlines of climate change.
- Psychology
Learning to walk on err
Flub-inducing treadmill tasks aid motor learning, with rehab implications.
- Health & Medicine
Malaria vaccine yields protection
In its first large-scale test, the experimental immunization cuts risk of disease in about half of the children getting it and limits severe infections, researchers report.
- Health & Medicine
Teen brains’ growing pains
Testing captures substantial changes in some youths’ IQs and gray matter.
- Life
Stopping a real-life ‘Contagion’
An antibody treatment fends off the lethal Hendra virus in monkeys and may also work against the equally dangerous Nipah virus.
- Humans
Plague bug not so fierce after all
DNA analysis shows bacterium was fairly ordinary but thrived in pestilent conditions of medieval Europe.
- Health & Medicine
A mind for optimism
When predicting the risk of unfortunate events, people heed positive news better than ill tidings.
- Humans
Stone Age paint shop unearthed
The discovery of tools for making a substance possibly used in body decoration suggests humans could invent and plan by 100,000 years ago.
- Humans
Columbus’ arrival linked to carbon dioxide drop
The depopulation of the Americas due to introduced European diseases may have spurred Europe's Little Ice Age.
- Health & Medicine
Vaccine makes headway against trachoma
An experimental immunization might someday aid public health efforts to counter a blinding disease.
