Humans
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Health & Medicine
Brain Sabotage: Alzheimer’s protein may spawn miniseizures
Amyloid-beta, a protein implicated in Alzheimer's disease, causes misfiring of neurons and minor brain seizures in mice.
- Health & Medicine
Debate Renewed: Diabetes drug ups heart risk
A popular diabetes drug significantly increases the risk of heart failure and heart attack in those who take it.
- Health & Medicine
Blood vessel growth factor also does housekeeping
A growth factor that promotes blood vessel development also maintains normal blood vessel health, perhaps explaining the vascular side effects of some cancer drugs.
- Archaeology
Ancient city grew from outside in
A 6,000-year-old city in what's now northeastern Syria developed when initially independent settlements expanded and merged, unlike other nearby cities that grew from a core outward.
- Anthropology
Advantage: Starch
An enhanced ability to digest starch may have given early humans an evolutionary advantage over their ape relatives.
- Health & Medicine
How platelets help cancer spread
A tumor cell protein influences blood platelets in a way that helps a cancer spread through the body.
- Health & Medicine
Curry Power
A component of the spice turmeric, the color-giving ingredient in yellow curries, may help prevent and possibly treat Alzheimer's disease.
- Humans
Letters from the September 15, 2007, issue of Science News
Talk talk talk “Hidden Smarts: Abstract thought trumps IQ scores in autism” (SN: 7/7/07, p. 4) didn’t mention that traditional IQ tests are in one sense “language” tests. The Ravens test doesn’t involve language processing in a typical manner. A person with a language disorder, as an autistic person is assumed to be, would do […]
- Humans
From the September 4, 1937, issue
Growling grizzlies star at Yellowstone, radioactive dating puts Earth's age at less than 3 billion years, and a suggestion that overanxious parents can turn their children into stutterers.
- Health & Medicine
Aura origins show the way in epilepsy surgery
Epilepsy patients who experience multiple auras before a seizure, usually considered poor candidates for corrective brain surgery, might benefit from by a new brain scan procedure.
- Anthropology
Men’s fertile role in evolving long lives
The ability of men 55 and older to father children may have had evolutionary effects that caused both sexes to develop longer lifespans.
- Health & Medicine
HIV is double trouble for brain
The virus that causes AIDS can also cause dementia, by both killing mature brain cells and blocking the creation of new ones.
