Humans
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Climate
Kyoto climate treaty’s greenhouse ‘success’
There are 33 days until the opening of formal negotiations in Copenhagen on the next global climate-protection treaty. The hoped-for accord would take up where the current treaty leaves off. But to get some perspective on just where that is, a new United Nations report describes for negotiators and the public just how much the Kyoto Protocol has achieved. And real strides have been made in slowing the growth of greenhouse-gas emissions, thanks to many European nations (albeit with little help from North American ones or Japan).
- Humans
H1N1 vaccine: Counting side effects
Pregnant women are considered at high risk for suffering complications or death from the new H1N1 pandemic swine flu. So they’re near the top of the list for getting vaccinated. A new international study calculates that up to 400 out of every million pregnant women who receive such swine-flu shots will experience a miscarriage within 24 hours. But not BECAUSE of their flu shots.
- Health & Medicine
HIV self-test proves accurate
Study in an ER shows individuals successfully determined their own HIV status.
- Health & Medicine
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria strike drug of last resort
Warning signs emerge in the use of an old drug effective against resistant microbes.
- Health & Medicine
Your cholesterol drug might help you weather the flu
Data suggest illness is less likely to be fatal in those taking statins
- Health & Medicine
Flu shots for moms-to-be benefit babies
Study of about 4,000 pregnant women shows link between newborn health and whether mom got vaccinated
- Health & Medicine
Mice: seasonal flu vaccine and vulnerability to pandemic strain
Earlier this year, Dutch scientists showed that vaccinating mice against seasonal strains of flu rendered the animals unnecessarily vulnerable to dying if they later encountered a pandemic flu strain. Authors of this study now ask whether there are lessons in their data for parents. Such as whether to ignore recommendations that youngsters get seasonal-flu shots during years when pandemic flu is raging. Others suggest this idea, at least as regards people, is bunk.
- Humans
A health-care communication revolution
Discussing how physicians and patients can cure their misunderstandings of medical statistics.
- Health & Medicine
Psychiatric meds can bring on rapid weight gain in kids
Drugs that alleviate severe mental disorders can also result in troubling metabolic changes.
- Health & Medicine
Redefining self, phantom self
Amputees who feel phantom limbs can learn to do physically impossible body tricks
- Health & Medicine
Skin bacteria different in diabetic mice
An excessive number and low diversity of skin bacteria could explain why wounds in diabetics are slow to heal
- Science & Society
College trend: Cut-rate faculty
Among U.S. colleges and universities, tenure-track positions decreasingly represent the norm. “Adjuncts who teach part time are now about half of the professoriate,” according to a series of articles in the Oct. 23 Chronicle of Higher Education. Non-tenure-track faculty may be offered full-time slots and benefits, but with embarrassing paychecks.
