Humans
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Health & Medicine
Shingles shot’s value is uncertain
The cost-effectiveness of a new vaccine against shingles remains uncertain, making it difficult to assess whether adults should routinely receive the shot.
- Health & Medicine
Progestin linked to hearing loss in older women
Elderly women who received progestin as part of hormone replacement therapy have poorer hearing than do women who didn't get progestin.
- Anthropology
Neandertal debate goes south
A controversial report concludes that Neandertals lived on southwestern Europe's Iberian coast until 24,000 years ago, sharing the area for several thousand years with modern humans before dying out.
- Health & Medicine
Calling Death’s Bluff
New methods of assessing a person's risk of sudden death due to a heart arrhythmia may enable doctors to better identify which patients need to receive an implanted defibrillator.
- Health & Medicine
Babies Motor Better with Breast Milk
Even a few months of breastfeeding appear to confer important motor-coordination benefits on an infant.
- Humans
Letters from the September 23, 2006, issue of Science News
Moo juiced? I live in Northern California, where forest-biomass power plants are common (“Radiation Redux: Forest fires remobilize fallout from bomb tests,” SN: 7/15/06, p. 38). One power plant takes the ashes that result and places them where cows forage. I’m wondering to what level of concentration this process will accumulate the cesium in organic […]
- Humans
From the September 12, 1936, issue
A babe on the moon, antiseptics from oat hulls, and spinning isotopes apart.
- Humans
Grounded Epidemic: Reduced air travel after 9/11 slowed flu spread
The perennial winter-flu season developed more gradually than usual in the United States in the months after September 11, 2001, because of a reduction in air travel following that day's terrorist attacks.
- Anthropology
Scripted Stone: Ancient block may bear Americas’ oldest writing
A slab of stone found by road builders in southern Mexico may contain the oldest known writing in the Americas, although some scientists regard the nearly 3,000-year-old inscriptions cautiously.
- Health & Medicine
Weapon against MS: Transplant drug limits nerve damage
An immune-suppressing drug called fingolimod slows multiple sclerosis relapses in patients.
- Humans
Undergrad science and engineering are broadly useful
Although they aren’t researchers, the majority of people who earned bachelor’s degrees in science and engineering at least 10 years ago find their knowledge of those fields useful in their current workplaces. The findings, which come from an analysis of three national databases of college graduates, were reported in August by Mark C. Regets of […]
- Humans
Women: Where are your patents?
Business-school researchers find a big gender gap among academic life scientists in patenting rates.
