Humans
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Health & Medicine
The high cost of diabetes
Although an estimated 7.8 percent of Americans have been diagnosed with diabetes, patients with this metabolic disease rack up 23 percent of hospital costs nationwide, a new federal analysis finds. Their collective hospital bill in 2008, the most recent year for which data were available: almost $83 billion.
- Life
Muscles remember past glory
Extra nuclei produced by training survive disuse, making it easier to rebuild lost strength.
- Humans
Retirement at 62 boosts well-being
People who retire on the early side tend to feel better physically and emotionally than those who quit working earlier or later.
- Humans
Depressed teens not shunned
In high school, students with depression seek — rather than settle for — friends with similar moods.
- Humans
Sociologists looking at risky behavior plunge into the gene pool
A new study of youths reveals that social scientists’ opinions still vary on the potential of studying how genes interact with social contexts.
- Astronomy
Celestial wish list
A panel of astronomers ranks proposed astrophysics projects for the coming decade.
- Humans
Protecting innocent — and not so innocent — bystanders
Technique removes pedestrians from Google Street View images.
- Health & Medicine
Want a baby? Relax . . .
Scientists have just confirmed what obstetricians knew anecdotally for years — that women under stress can have a difficult time getting pregnant. What’s new: Biochemical markers quantified the degree of stress — and potentially the type — affecting fertility.
- Tech
The people’s pulsar
Thousands of volunteers help discover a neutron star by donating the processing power in their idle home computers.
- Tech
Research trials pose challenge to medical privacy
How — or even whether — to share a medical data collected on research subjects poses a growing dilemma. Certainly, doctors would benefit from knowing if their patients had been receiving medicines, physical therapies or dietary supplements. Or if a patient had a history of drug abuse, mental illness, sexually transmitted diseases or engaging in risky behaviors. But in the wrong hands, such sensitive data could compromise an individual’s ability to keep a job — even retain shared custody rights to children during a contentious divorce.
- Health & Medicine
Delivering a knockout
Scientists have finally succeeded in genetically engineering rats.
- Archaeology
Lucy’s kind used stone tools to butcher animals
Animal bones found in East Africa show the oldest signs of stone-tool use and meat eating by hominids.
