Humans
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Health & Medicine
Hidden Damage: Parkinson’s harm to nerves in heart may explain dizziness and fainting
Parkinson's disease patients have damaged nerve endings in the heart, kidneys, and thyroid gland, suggesting the disease harms the autonomic nervous system that regulates involuntary functions of these and other organs and glands.
- Health & Medicine
Could nicotine patch fight depression?
Chronic nicotine administration blocked a symptom of depression in an animal model of the disease.
- Health & Medicine
Fetal stress begets adult hypertension
Intense stress during pregnancy may program the baby's development in ways that foster high blood pressure during adulthood.
- Health & Medicine
With this bait, TB won’t play possum
An oral tuberculosis vaccine, designed to help curtail the spread of the disease in wildlife populations, may also find use in people.
- Health & Medicine
No benefit from screening
Two large studies confirm that a urine test for a common childhood cancer—neuroblastoma—offers no benefit.
- Health & Medicine
Cancer Link Cooks Up Doubt: Heating may form potential carcinogen in food
Foods cooked at high temperatures contain large concentrations of acrylamide, a compound suspected to cause cancer in people, but researchers are cautious about acting on preliminary, unpublished data.
- Humans
In USSR, generals did it by the numbers
A statistical analysis of the dates and times of Soviet underground nuclear tests suggests that the favorite numbers of the test-site commander may have had a significant influence upon the precise timing of the detonations.
- Health & Medicine
Virus gives cancer the cold treatment
A genetically engineered version of a common cold virus appears to kill cancer cells without harming healthy tissue.
- Anthropology
Attack of the Ancestor: Neandertals took a stab at violent assaults
The pieced-together fragments of a 36,000-year-old Neandertal skull reveal a bony scar caused by a blow from a sharp tool or weapon.
- Health & Medicine
Deadly Pickup: Enzyme permits plague germ to ride in fleas
Acquisition of a gene that enables the plague bacterium to live inside blood-sucking fleas may have set the stage for the Black Death.
- Health & Medicine
Risk Factor: Genetic defect hikes breast cancer threat
A mutation already linked to several types of cancer doubles the risk of breast cancer in a woman and multiplies men's slight risk of the disease even more dramatically.
- Health & Medicine
Put Out to Pasture: Strategy to prolong antibiotics’ potency
The use of antibiotics to promote growth in farm animals hastens the end of their medical effectiveness.
