Humans
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Humans
Einstein’s Vision
Accompanying the Einstein exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History, this Web site offers a captivating portrait of the most famous scientist of the 20th century. Several online essays probe Albert Einstein’s theories, providing insights into light, time, energy, and gravity. Others explore aspects of his life and times. Go to: http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/einstein/
- Health & Medicine
New tests may catch bicyclers on dope
Two new tests, on blood and urine, detect the presence of synthetic erythropoietin, a drug that boosts red blood cell counts and enhances stamina.
- Health & Medicine
Did colonization spread ulcers?
A comparison of strains of Helicobacter pylori, the bacterium that causes ulcers, suggests that colonists brought it to the New World.
- Health & Medicine
Acrylamide—From Spuds to Gingerbread
Just in time for the holiday season, the Bavarian Ministry of Health reports finding extremely high concentrations of acrylamide—a chemical that causes cancer in rats—in gingerbread. German chemists turned up acrylamide in a favorite holiday treat: gingerbread. Whether baked at home or fried at a restaurant, all hot-potato products cooked up substantial quantitites of acrylamide. […]
- Archaeology
Neandertals’ diet put meat in their bones
Chemical analyses of Neandertals' bones portray these ancient Europeans as skillful hunters and avid meat eaters, countering a theory that they mainly scavenged scraps of meat from abandoned carcasses.
- Health & Medicine
Male Pill on the Horizon: Drug disables mouse sperm but wears off quickly
A new oral drug created to ease a genetic disorder could have contraceptive benefits.
- Health & Medicine
First-Line Treatment: Chronic-leukemia drug clears a big hurdle
In its first large-scale test on newly diagnosed leukemia patients, the drug imatinib—also called Gleevec and STI-571—stopped or reversed the disease in nearly all patients receiving it.
- Health & Medicine
Visionary science for the intestine
A tiny disposable flash camera that a person swallows can detect problems in the small intestine.
- Health & Medicine
Bone scan reveals estrogen effects
Using a scanning technology called microcomputerized tomography, scientists have a new way to look at the difference between bone exposed to estrogen and bone deprived of it.
- Health & Medicine
Common antibiotic may cure river blindness
Tests in cows suggest that tetracycline might kill the tiny worm that spreads river blindness, a disease that infects about 18 million people.
- Humans
From the June 14, 1930, issue
1,500,000,000 YEARS OF LIFE PORTRAYED IN GREAT HALL OF PAINTINGS Fifteen hundred million years of life on this planet will be unrolled as a single connected epic in a series of three majestic new halls planned for the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. Fossils, rocks, mounted plant and animal specimens, paintings, and statuary […]
- Health & Medicine
Imaging Parkinson’s
A new brain-imaging technique can supply proof of Parkinson's disease in people whose symptoms fall short of the standard definition of the disease.
