Humans
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Earth
Clean out your medicine cabinet: Today!
For years, people have been chastised for pitching unused drugs into the trash, turning them into potentially toxic pollutants that can leach into the environment. On Saturday, September 25, the Drug Enforcement Administration is offering to take those drugs off our hands. For free. No questions asked.
- Health & Medicine
Disease donations
Sometimes organ donors share more than a functioning body part. They can unwittingly bestow quickly lethal infections. That’s what happened, beginning last November, according to a new case report.
- Math
Potato chips: A symptom of the U.S. R&D problem
Last year, U.S. consumers spent $7.1 billion on potato chips — $2 billion more than the federal government’s total 2009 investment on research and development. There’s something wrong, here, when Americans are more willing to empty their wallets for the junk food that will swell their waistlines than for investments in the engine driving the creation of jobs, economic growth and national security.
- Earth
Gulf spill may have been somewhat bigger than feds, BP estimated
Researchers estimate the oil output using a new technique developed for measuring the output of marine hydrothermal vents.
- Humans
Clues to child sacrifices found in Inca building
Children killed in elaborate rituals were drawn from all over the South American empire, new research suggests.
- Health & Medicine
Main malaria parasite came to humans from gorillas, not chimps
Using DNA from fecal samples, researchers show that the infection was not passed to Homo sapiens by its closest primate relative.
- Health & Medicine
Vital flaw
Liver cells that inherit the wrong number of chromosomes often do just fine, and may even have some advantages.
- Health & Medicine
Enzyme might underlie some stroke damage
Inhibiting NOX4 in mice limits brain injury, tests show.
- Health & Medicine
Obesity in children linked to common cold virus
Exposure to adenovirus-36 may partly explain why kids are getting heavier, a new study suggests.
- Tech
To tame traffic, go with the flow
Lights should respond to cars, a study concludes, not the other way around.
- Psychology
Why cell phone talkers are annoys-makers
Overhearing half of a conversation is so aggravating at least in part because it inordinately distracts a listener from tasks at hand.
- Life
Streetlights turn young duds into studs
Nocturnal illumination starts youthful male blue tits chirping earlier in the morning, tempting the mates of their still-snoozing elders.
