Humans
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Health & Medicine
Pregnancy Alert: Proteins may predict preeclampsia
Blood concentrations of two proteins that affect blood vessel growth appear to foretell the pregnancy condition known as preeclampsia.
- Anthropology
European find gets Stone Age date
A new radiocarbon analysis indicates that a skeleton found more than a century ago in an Italian cave dates to around 26,400 to 23,200 years ago.
- Health & Medicine
Virus might explain respiratory ailments
Human metapneumovirus, first isolated in 2001, is present in many respiratory infections that had previously gone unexplained.
- Health & Medicine
Calcium Superchargers
Foods such as yogurts supplemented with fiberlike sugars are developing into the latest wave in functional foods–commercial goods seeded with ingredients that boost their nutritiousness or healthfulness. Makers of foods doctored with these unusual, nearly flavorless sugars claim that their products improve the body’s absorption of calcium in the diet, thereby offering bones a treat. […]
- Health & Medicine
Early Warning? Inflammatory protein is tied to colon cancer risk
C-reactive protein, an inflammatory protein linked to heart disease, might also signal susceptibility to colon cancer.
- Humans
Letters from the Feb. 7, 2004, issue of Science News.
Warm topic I was fascinated by the article on heat production in flowers (“Warm-Blooded Plants?” SN: 12/13/03, p. 379: Warm-Blooded Plants?). It speculated on the evolutionary origins of such thermogenesis and observed how it predominates in ancient lineages of flowering plants like magnolias and water lilies. But thermogenesis goes back much farther than this, for […]
- Health & Medicine
Malaria drug boosts recovery rates
Adding the herbal-extract drug artesunate to standard malaria treatment reduces the relapse rate, even in areas where the malaria parasite is resistant to standard drugs.
- Health & Medicine
Aging protein saps muscle strength
Proteins crucial for muscle strength begin to function poorly as rats get older.
- Health & Medicine
HIV outwits immune system, again
The AIDS virus uses immune system proteins to hitch rides on the antibody factories known as B cells, possibly helping it find potential host cells.
- Health & Medicine
Bacteria Provide a Frontline Defense
Bacteria genetically engineered to secrete microbe-killing compounds can fight disease in mice and rats.
- Health & Medicine
Busy hospitals may not be best choice
A large number of heart surgeries done at a hospital doesn't always correlate with a low mortality rate from such operations at the facility.
- Humans
Better protection from mad cow disease
The Food and Drug Administration has announced several new measures to keep meat that's potentially infected with mad cow disease out of food supplies.
