Humans
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Psychology
Kids learn late to tackle data overload
An information-thrifty tactic used by adults for making accurate judgments takes hold during the tween years.
- Health & Medicine
Protein implicated in many cancers
A hormone receptor that shows up in 11 tumor types might make a good target for drugs, a new study suggests.
- Life
Gene therapy for depression
Researchers were able to reduce pathological behaviors in mice by delivering genetic material to a particular brain region.
- Humans
How testing improves memory
By creating associations, quizzes improve recall much more effectively than just reviewing notes.
- Psychology
Getting to not know you
Knowledge of a romantic partner’s likes and dislikes declines over decades, a study finds.
- Chemistry
Guards of the blood-brain barrier identified
Specialized cells called pericytes are crucial to protecting the central nervous system, two new studies demonstrate.
- Life
More than a chicken, fewer than a grape
A decade after the completion of the Human Genome Project, the exact number of human genes remains elusive.
- Health & Medicine
Implants help heroin addicts kick habit
Installing a slow-release drug under the skin enables some abusers of illicit and prescription drugs to get through withdrawal, a new study shows.
- Health & Medicine
Mice robbed of darkness fatten up
Time of day can affect calories' impact, a study shows.
- Health & Medicine
How being deaf can enhance sight
Hearing-specialized brain regions can adapt to processing visual input, cat experiments show.
- Life
The unusual suspects
With no obvious culprit in sight, geneticists do broader sweeps to identify autism’s causes.
- Health & Medicine
Pesticide in womb may promote obesity, study finds
One-quarter of babies born to women who had relatively high concentrations of a DDT-breakdown product in their blood grew unusually fast for at least the first year of life. Not only is this prevalence of accelerated growth unusually high, but it’s also a worrisome trend since such rapid growth during early infancy has — in other studies — put children on track to become obese.
