Humans

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We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

  1. Life

    Eat less, weigh more

    Separate neurons in the nematode brain control eating and fat-building. The discovery may help explain some mysteries of obesity.

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  2. Health & Medicine

    Nanomagnets tackle cancer

    Under the influence of an external magnetic field, tiny magnets act as highly localized space heaters, warming to temperatures that kill adjacent cancer cells.

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  3. Earth

    TV Take-Backs

    Here's one solution for all of the conventional TVs that will be cast off during the imminent digital-TV transition.

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  4. Climate

    A Fairy Tale: Cheap Gas

    Lawmakers are looking for an answer on how to lower the price of gasoline: That's the wrong question.

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  5. Climate

    IPCC Lite

    A new primer on climate change is slim and trim.

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  6. Health & Medicine

    Neuron Killers

    Misfolded, clumping proteins evade conviction, but they remain prime suspects in neurodegenerative diseases.

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  7. Humans

    Wake-up call for sleep apnea

    A large, long-term study of sleep apnea links the breathing disorder to increased risk of death.

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  8. Climate

    Trade affects China’s carbon footprint

    Featured blog: Goods exported from China to the United States and elsewhere account for a huge share of the Asian behemoth's emissions of greenhouse gases.

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  9. Health & Medicine

    Dopamine could help the sleep-deprived still learn

    Sleep loss impairs fruit flies’ ability to learn, just as it does in people. But boosting dopamine in the flies can erase these learning deficits.

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  10. Health & Medicine

    Promising HIV gel fails in latest trial

    Halted in trials, an anti-HIV gel is ineffective, but may not add to risk of infection, as previously thought.

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  11. Archaeology

    Greeks followed a celestial Olympics

    A Greek gadget discovered more than a century ago in a 2,100-year-old shipwreck not only tracked the motion of heavenly bodies and predicted eclipses, but also functioned as a sophisticated calendar and mapped the four-year cycle of the ancient Greek Olympics.

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  12. Health & Medicine

    Costly Health Care Mistakes

    Medical malpractice that many of us won’t recognize as such — or be able to prove — remains too high.

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