Humans
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Health & Medicine
Diversity of human skin bacteria revealed
First large-scale inventory of microbes charts types, locales of bacteria.
- Ecosystems
Costs of Choked-Up Waters
Scientists tally the economic toll of fertilizing pollutants on water quality.
- Life
Stone Age gal gets hip
Researchers have found an approximately 1-million-year-old fossil pelvis that, in their view, indicates that Homo erectus females gave birth to surprisingly big-brained babies.
- Health & Medicine
Telomere enzyme a likely key to longevity
Study with the telomerase enzyme gives mice a longevity boost without high cancer risk.
- Humans
Women’s chromosome division different from men’s
Using fluorescent markers, scientists are discovering that men and women divide chromosomes differently. The research may help explain Down syndrome and other chromosomal disorders.
- Agriculture
A Mushrooming Advance
Human skin isn't the only thing that makes vitamin D upon exposure to the ultraviolet radiation.
- Health & Medicine
Gender matters in heart transplants
Heart transplant recipients who get a gender-matched organ fare better than those receiving mismatched organs.
- Health & Medicine
Treating viral heart infections
Viral heart infections respond to interferon treatment, easing cardiomyopathy in some patients.
- Health & Medicine
Mini heart attack best treated like the big one
Patients admitted to hospitals with mild symptoms of a heart attack may benefit from getting a heart catheterization performed promptly.
- Health & Medicine
Itch
When it comes to sensory information detected by the body, pain is king, and itch is the court jester. But that insistent, tingly feeling—satisfied only by a scratch—is anything but funny to the millions of people who suffer from it chronically.
- Humans
Food allergy advice may be peanuts
Early exposure to peanuts in a baby’s diet seems to lessen the risk of developing a peanut allergy later.
- Psychology
A genetic pathway to language disorders
Researchers suspect a newly uncovered regulatory link between two genes contributes to language impairments in a range of developmental disorders.
