Humans

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We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

  1. Health & Medicine

    Tame-walk potion

    A one-two sting and a cockroach lets a wasp lead it like a dog on a leash.

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  2. Earth

    TNT buster

    A bacterium from Yellowstone could help break down TNT.

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  3. Health & Medicine

    Brain trauma

    Cooling the body temperature of a child who has severe brain injury doesn’t seem to help recovery, but the jury is still out.

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  4. Agriculture

    Federal Research Censorship

    The media-affairs office in federal agencies can be fairly obstructionist, and when they do, the public comes out the loser.

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  5. Health & Medicine

    Bad synergy

    Hookworm and other parasite infections work in concert to heighten risk of anemia in children. The problem may be especially bad for school-aged children, whose learning ability is often compromised by anemia.

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  6. Health & Medicine

    Microbes clean up mercury

    Researchers think a microbe could clean up mercury-laced Native American artifacts.

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  7. Humans

    Fostering gains

    New studies indicate that abused and neglected kids benefit from living with relatives and from high-quality foster care services.

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  8. Agriculture

    Green Living, Chinese-Style

    Chinese is developing eco-cities to take their citizens straight from the agricultural to the ecological age.

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  9. Earth

    Natural heat

    Heat from the decay of radioactive elements deep within the planet could meet Earth’s energy needs almost three times over — if we could harness all of it.

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  10. Health & Medicine

    A Faulty Eye Witness: Hallucinations

    Treatment for Oliver Sacks' cancer damaged an eye and triggered something he never expected: his brain to display things that simply didn’t exist.

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  11. Health & Medicine

    A Faulty Eye Witness, Part I

    Oliver Sacks shared observations from his latest journal on how losing sight in one eye changed a man's life. Sacks had intimate knowledge of every detail – because he’s the patient.

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  12. Chemistry

    Deciding Who’s First

    Oxygen serves as the focus of who to credit with a discovery – and why.

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