Humans
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Health & Medicine
Breast cancer options made clearer
An inexpensive test for two proteins in the blood can indicate whether women with breast cancer that hasn't yet spread to lymph nodes are likely to face such a relapse after surgery.
- Health & Medicine
High estrogen linked to lung cancer
Estrogen receptors proliferating on tumor cells in women's lungs may account for why women seem more easily affected by the carcinogenic effects of tobacco smoke.
- Health & Medicine
Getting melanoma chemotherapy to work
A drug that turns off a gene that blocks the action of chemotherapy in melanoma shows promise against this lethal skin cancer.
- Health & Medicine
Protein predicts prostate cancer spread
Prostate cancer patients who harbor high concentrations of a protein called thymosine beta-15 in their tumors face an increased risk that the cancer will spread.
- Health & Medicine
Chemotherapy baldness thwarted in rats
Scientists studying rats have now developed a medication that wards off chemotherapy-induced baldness.
- Health & Medicine
Asthma pressure may shrink airways
Mechanical stress from constricting muscles could cause airway-lining cells to reproduce, eventually thickening the lining and narrowing the air passage.
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- Health & Medicine
Panel ups RDAs for some antioxidants
An Institute of Medicine panel reported that dietary antioxidants such as vitamins A and E can limit cellular damage from free radicals but warned that studies in people have never adequately established a direct connection between antioxidant consumption and prevention of chronic disease.
- Health & Medicine
Silencing the BRCA1 gene spells trouble
Some breast cancer patients without a mutation in the BRCA1 gene nevertheless have an incapacitated gene, silenced by a process called hypermethylation of nearby DNA.
- Archaeology
Early New World Settlers Rise in East
New evidence supports the view that people occupied a site in coastal Virginia at least 15,000 years ago.
- Anthropology
Goat busters track domestication
People began to manage herds of wild goats at least 10,000 years ago in western Iran.
- Anthropology
Lucy on the ground with knuckles
Some early human ancestors appear to have walked on all fours using their knuckles, much as chimpanzees do.
