Humans

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We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

  1. Health & Medicine

    Biohazard: Smoking before or after pregnancy may harm daughters’ fertility

    Smoking before pregnancy or during breastfeeding might impair the female offspring's fertility, a study in mice shows.

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  2. Health & Medicine

    Wrong Way: HIV vaccine hinders immunity in mice

    An HIV vaccine hurts, not helps, the immune systems of mice, say scientists.

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  3. Health & Medicine

    9/11 reflux

    Up to 20 percent of 9/11 workers in New York City experience symptoms of gastroesophageal reflux disease, also called acid reflux.

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  4. Humans

    Letters from the November 24, 2007, issue of Science News

    Blame where it’s due Although multinational agreements on global warming try to spread the burden among all nations, data from the MILAGRO project in Mexico City (“What Goes Up,” SN: 9/8/07, p. 152) suggest that the major responsibility for excess production of greenhouse gases and other pollutants lies with the megacities, which constitute a rather […]

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  5. Humans

    From the November 13, 1937, issue

    Reconstructions of European dwellings from 2 and 4 millennia ago, an asteroid traveling at record-breaking speed, and a headlight that tilts as the car goes up or down a hill.

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  6. Health & Medicine

    Bone Builder: Drug may offer steroid users new protection against fractures

    A bone-growth medication called teriparatide outperforms the standard bone-preserving drug alendronate in people with steroid-induced osteoporosis.

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  7. Health & Medicine

    Superbug: What makes one bacterium so deadly

    A molecule that pierces immune cells gives some aggressive antibiotic-resistant staph bacteria their fearsome virulence.

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  8. Health & Medicine

    Canadians Advocate Boosting Vitamin D in Pregnancy

    Higher vitamin D intake is recommended for pregnant women and nursing moms in Canada than for those in the United States.

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  9. Health & Medicine

    Too little sleep may fatten kids

    Lack of sleep may promote childhood obesity.

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  10. Anthropology

    Wild chimps scale branches of culture

    Distinctive behaviors in wild-chimp communities point to a basic cultural capacity in these animals.

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  11. Humans

    Letters from the November 17, 2007, issue of Science News

    Unequal opportunity “The Wealth of Nations” (SN: 9/1/07, p. 138) describes the difficulty of moving from exporting one product to exporting another in terms of a “distance” between various products. I would imagine, however, that a nation that already manufactures computers, for example, could easily move into calculators, but that the reverse might not be […]

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  12. Humans

    From the November 6, 1937, issue

    Giant electrical generators take shape in Pittsburgh, astronomers puzzle over unusual stellar spectra, and a dinosaur ancestor from Texas visits Harvard.

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