Humans
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- 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.
- Health & Medicine
The New GI Tracts
For preventing heart disease, diets that control insulin are all the buzz.
- Health & Medicine
Tests may better detect prostate cancer
Two novel tests for prostate cancer may help physicians catch this disease earlier and with far fewer false alarms.
- Health & Medicine
From rabies virus to anti-HIV vaccine
Researchers working with mice are trying to fashion an HIV vaccine by using a weakened rabies virus to bring an HIV glycoprotein to the attention of the immune system.
- Health & Medicine
Treating one disease caused another
Egypt's public health service inadvertently spread hepatitis C while treating patients for schistosomiasis, a common parasitic disease, with injections of antischistomal medications.
- Health & Medicine
Antacids for asthma sufferers?
People with asthma have more acidic lungs than do people who don't have the disease, a finding that may prompt the development of novel asthma treatments aimed at restoring the normal pH value of the lungs.
