Humans
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Health & Medicine
Drugs slow aging in worms
Drugs that defuse so-called free radicals lengthen a worm's life span by more than 50 percent.
- Health & Medicine
Viruses depend on shocking proteins
To replicate within a cell, a bird virus must force the cell to make certain proteins.
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- Health & Medicine
Gene Tied to Heightened Diabetes Risk
People with three particular variations within the gene that encodes the protein calpain-10 face triple the risk of getting type II diabetes.
- Health & Medicine
Insulin inaction may hurt even nondiabetics
Flawed insulin activity may lead to blood changes that foster atherosclerosis, even in people who don't have diabetes.
- Health & Medicine
Cells profilerate in magnetic fields
Magnetic fields such as those found within a few feet of outdoor electric-power lines could make cells that are vulnerable to cancer behave like tumors.
- Health & Medicine
Nerves in heart show damage in Parkinson’s
Some patients with Parkinson's disease also have destruction of nerve terminals in the heart that affects blood pressure.
- Health & Medicine
Fighting cancer from the cabbage patch
Extracts of foods belonging to the cabbage family can block the action of estrogen, a hormone that fuels many cancers.
- Health & Medicine
Stem-cell transplant works on lupus
Severe lupus can be reversed with a transplant of the patient's own bone marrow stem cells, after they're allowed to mature outside the body, and medication that neutralizes self-attacking immune cells.
- Health & Medicine
Old polio vaccine free of HIV, SIV
Three laboratories analyzing remaining samples of polio vaccine used in the late 1950s find that none contains any human or simian immunodeficiency virus, or chimpanzee DNA—making polio vaccine unlikely to be the cause of the initial HIV outbreak in central Africa.
- Humans
Postdocs warrant more status and support
A new study finds a pressing need to improve the pay and status of postdoctoral scholars.
- Health & Medicine
Blood-cell transplants slow kidney cancer
A new transplant technique that uses blood transfusions from a sibling combined with decreasing doses of immune-suppressing drugs enables some patients to fight off advanced kidney cancer.
