Humans

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We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

  1. Psychology

    Aboriginal time runs east to west

    Some indigenous Australians envision time moving westward, suggesting that culture shapes how people think about this basic concept.

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  2. Humans

    Building a better bomb sniffer

    A new handheld device detects TATP, an explosive that is easy to make but hard to detect.

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  3. Life

    Genome may be mostly junk after all

    A cross-species comparison suggests that more than 90 percent of the DNA in the human genome has no known function.

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  4. Health & Medicine

    Immune gene variants help stop HIV

    Research on HIV-infected people who rarely develop AIDS might lead to better drugs or a vaccine.

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  5. Tech

    Election projections for science investments

    The November 2, mid-term election results are in (mostly) and pundits are billing it as a historic turnabout. With a divided Congress, passing legislation — never an easy task — risks becoming harder still. And with fiscal austerity having been a leading campaign issue for the newbies, R&D is unlikely to see a major boost in federal funding during the next two years.

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  6. Tech

    Plenty of foods harbor BPA, study finds

    Some communities have banned the sale of plastic baby bottles and sippy cups that are manufactured using bisphenol A, a hormone-mimicking chemical. In a few grocery stores, cashiers have already begun donning gloves to avoid handling thermal receipt paper whose BPA-based surface coating may rub off on the fingers. But how’s a family to avoid exposure to this contaminant when it taints the food supply?

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  7. Health & Medicine

    MRIs pinpoint time of stroke

    Doing a magnetic resonance scan promptly when a patient arrives at a hospital could render more patients eligible for a time-sensitive clot-busting therapy that can limit brain damage.

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  8. Chemistry

    Skin is no barrier to BPA, study shows

    The new finding suggests handling store receipts could be a significant source of internal exposure to the hormone-mimicking chemical.

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  9. Humans

    BP gusher left deep sea toxic for a time, study finds

    In the early weeks after the damaged BP well began gushing huge quantities of oil and gas, a toxic brew was developing deep below the surface in plumes emanating from the wellhead. Finned fish and marine mammals probably steered well clear of the spewing hydrocarbons. But planktonic young — larval critters and algae that ride the currents — would have been proverbial sitting ducks.

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  10. Tech

    Trading places

    As the pace of financial transactions accelerates, researchers look forward to a time when the only limiting factor is the speed of light.

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  11. Health & Medicine

    The fingers don’t lie

    The brain has at least two copy editors, typing experiments show.

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  12. Humans

    Deep African roots for toolmaking method

    A method for trimming stone-tool edges appeared 75,000 years ago in southern Africa, archaeologists contend, long before previous evidence of the practice.

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