Humans
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Anthropology
Southern Reindeer Folk
Western scientists make their first expeditions to Mongolia's Tsaatan people, herders who preserve the old ways at the southernmost rim of reindeer territory.
- Health & Medicine
Silencing a gene slows breast-tumor fighter
The protein encoded by the HOXA5 gene plays a key role in fighting breast cancer, helping to switch on cancer-suppressing genes.
- Humans
From the January 14, 1933, issue
NEW TYPE OF ATOM-SMASHING GENERATOR NEARS COMPLETION The new type of electrostatic high-voltage generator being constructed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at Round Hill, Mass., with a Research Corporation grant will be in operation in a few weeks. Dr. R.J. Van de Graaff, its inventor, President Karl T. Compton of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, […]
- Humans
World Development News
SciDev.Net offers news, opinion, and information about science and technology, particularly those aspects that affect developing countries around the world. The Web site maintains extensive “dossiers” on such topics as research ethics, climate change, indigenous knowledge, genetically modified crops, and intellectual property, with more to come. Go to: http://www.scidev.net/
- Health & Medicine
The Shocking Science of Tender Poultry
Just over 24 years ago, I wrote a news note on Australian experiments using low-voltage electricity to stimulate beef muscles after slaughter. Data had indicated that applying up to a 110-volt current for 90 seconds to fresh, uncut carcasses would keep the muscle from tightening–and toughening–during subsequent refrigerated storage, even if removed from the bone. […]
- Health & Medicine
Moms’ POPs, Sons’ Problems: Testicular cancer tied to a fetus’ pollutant contact
Women who've had substantial exposure to certain environmental pollutants are more likely than other women to bear sons who develop testicular cancers.
- Humans
Science Revalued: Report seeks revived Smithsonian science
A long-awaited report on science at the Smithsonian Institution calls urgently for more funding and also recommends preservation of beseiged materials-research center.
- Humans
Unfounded Fear: Scared to fly after 9/11? Don’t reach for the car keys
A new analysis of transportation in the United States shows that flying remains a much safer way to travel than driving, even when airline fatalities resulting from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks are included.
- Health & Medicine
Determined at Birth? Kidney makeup may set hypertension risk
People lacking a full complement of blood-filtering nephrons in their kidneys at birth are at increased risk of developing high blood pressure.
- Health & Medicine
Researchers target sickle-cell cure
Using stem cell transplants and a compound called antithymocyte globulin, researchers in Paris have cured 59 of 69 children of sickle-cell disease.
- Humans
From the June 14, 1930, issue
WELLAND CANAL Slightly more than a century after the falls and rapids of Niagara were first overcome for water transportation by a canal only 8 feet deep, there has been completed on practically the same site a mammoth structure that will pass giant 600-foot lake grain vessels up and down the 326.5-foot difference in elevation […]
- Health & Medicine
Snow and Cholera
Most people have heard of cholera, but few know anything about John Snow, the British doctor who determined how the disease is spread. Epidemiologist Ralph R. Frerichs of the University of California, Los Angeles School of Public Health has created a Web site devoted to Snow’s life and accomplishments, including such items as the full […]
