Humans
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Health & Medicine
A different GI link to colon cancers
As they head for the stomach from the mouth, the carbohydrates in vegetables, breads, fruits, and candy all begin breaking down into simple sugars. According to some studies, carbs with a low glycemic index (GI)–meaning that they are digested slowly–reduce a persons risk of heart disease and obesity through an as yet unidentified mechanism linked […]
- Health & Medicine
Urine tests can foretell bladder cancers
U.S. and Chinese researchers find that two unconventional urine tests can often predict when a person is developing bladder cancer even before tumors appear.
- Health & Medicine
Blood Relatives
After decades of research, several companies are about to release the first line of artificial blood products.
- Health & Medicine
Breathing on the Edge
Researchers are exploring how both sea-level lowlanders and high-altitude natives cope with low oxygen levels.
- Health & Medicine
Chocolate-science news
Make no mistake: Chocolate is not a health food. Indeed, most portions are loaded with empty calories from sugar and saturated fats. Hershey Foods Corp. Several studies in recent years, however, have demonstrated that among sweets, chocolate may possess a few nutritional advantages over most calorie-rich alternatives. The latest of these good-news findings is a […]
- Health & Medicine
Veggies prevent cancer through key protein
An international team of researchers has identified a protein that helps compounds in some vegetables prevent cancer.
- Health & Medicine
Study reveals male link to preeclampsia
Men who were born of mothers who had the pregnancy complication preeclampsia are roughly twice as likely to father a child through preeclamptic pregnancy than are men who were born of mothers who had a normal pregnancy.
- Anthropology
Fossil Skull Diversifies Family Tree
A 3.5-million-year-old skull found in Kenya represents a group of species in the human evolutionary family that evolved separately from australopithecines such as Lucy's kind in Ethiopia.
- Health & Medicine
Fatty plaques are unstable in vessels
Fatty plaques that form on the inside of blood vessels are less stable and hence more prone to rupture than are hard, calcified plaques.
- Health & Medicine
Parkinson’s implants survive in brain
Human embryonic stem cells transplanted into the brains of people with Parkinson's disease survive and grow better in patients under 60 years of age than in older patients.
- Health & Medicine
Soy slashes cancer-fostering hormones (with recipe)
Asian women tend to have much lower breast-cancer rates than their Western counterparts–unless they move to Europe or North America. Then the cancers incidence in these women begins to match local norms. United Soybean Board This observation has suggested that something about the Western way of life, probably diet, promotes cancer–or that something about Eastern […]
- Humans
Where’s the Book?
Innovative curricula are moving science education away from a reliance on textbooks.
