News
- Health & Medicine
Wholesome Grains: Insulin effects may explain healthful diet
Overweight people who eat whole grains rather than refined ones appear better equipped to manage their blood-sugar concentrations with minimal production of the hormone insulin, which could help explain why a diet rich in whole grains appears to guard against type II diabetes and heart disease.
- Earth
Shelter from Space Storms: Energy rebounds from Earth
NASA satellite observations show that Earth's outer atmosphere interacts dramatically with the solar wind and shields the planet from it.
- Health & Medicine
Amyloid Buster? New drug hinders Alzheimer’s protein
By disabling a dementia-linked protein, a synthetic drug is showing a tantalizing capacity to interfere with the formation of waxy amyloid deposits like those that accumulate in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease.
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Baby Facial: Infants monkey with face recognition
Between ages 6 months and 9 months, babies apparently lose the ability to discriminate between the faces of individuals in different animal species and start to develop an expertise in discerning human faces.
- Health & Medicine
Liquid could aid vaccine storage and use
A new medium for vaccines could remove the need to either refrigerate or rehydrate vaccines, hurdles that impede immunization campaigns in poor countries.
- Health & Medicine
Beating two infections with one vaccine
Identifying key similarities between related viruses could enable researchers to coax some vaccines to do double duty.
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In depression, the placebo also rises
In a small group of depressed patients, those whose condition improved after taking placebo pills for 6 weeks displayed many of the same brain changes observed in people who benefited from an antidepressant drug.
- Health & Medicine
Spice component versus cancer cells
Curcumin, a compound in the spice turmeric, teams up with an immune-system protein to kill prostate cancer cells in a new laboratory study.
- Earth
Honey may pose hidden toxic risk
Many honeys may contain potentially toxic traces of potent liver-damaging compounds produced naturally by a broad range of flowering plants.
- Animals
No Tickling: Common caterpillars deploy defensive hair
The caterpillars of the European cabbage butterfly have a chemical defense system that scientists haven't documented before.
- Health & Medicine
Feel the Burn: Alcohol sets pain-sensing nerves aflame
Alcohol makes certain pain-generating nerves trigger more easily than normal.
- 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.
