Humans
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Health & Medicine
BOOK LIST | On Speed: The Many Lives of Amphetamine
The rise, fall and resurgence of the original “anti-depressants.” ON SPEED: THE MANY LIVES OF AMPHETAMINE New York Univ. Press, 2008, 352 p., $29.95 (cloth).
- 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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- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Health & Medicine
Microbes clean up mercury
Researchers think a microbe could clean up mercury-laced Native American artifacts.
- Humans
Fostering gains
New studies indicate that abused and neglected kids benefit from living with relatives and from high-quality foster care services.
- Agriculture
Green Living, Chinese-Style
Chinese is developing eco-cities to take their citizens straight from the agricultural to the ecological age.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
