Uncategorized
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Gold-Metal Results: Compounds block immune proteins
Metals such as platinum and gold keep certain proteins from stimulating the body's immune response.
- Earth
Smoldered-Earth Policy: Created by ancient Amazonian natives, fertile, dark soils retain abundant carbon
Amazonian dark earth, or terra preta in Portuguese, is attracting scientific attention for its high productivity, mysterious past, and ability to store carbon.
- Health & Medicine
Gender Gap: Male-only gene affects men’s dopamine levels
A gene found only in men affects the brain's production of dopamine, a finding that may help explain why men are more likely than women to develop Parkinson's disease and other dopamine-related illnesses.
- Astronomy
Unique Explosion: Gamma-ray burst leads astronomers to supernova
Astronomers have found a supernova associated with the second-closest-known gamma-ray burst, confirming a model in which bursts arise from material blasted into space by a supernova explosion.
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19651
In the article, the author states that the observed supernova was “one of only a handful . . . heralded by a burst of gamma rays.” Isn’t that because gamma-ray bursts from core-collapse supernovas are directional, along the axis of rotation? Was GRB 060218 “unique” because it produced a burst of gamma rays or because […]
- Archaeology
Ancient Andean Maize Makers: Finds push back farming, trade in highland Peru
Fossilized plant remains recovered from a nearly 4,000-year-old house in the Andes Mountains of southern Peru show that highland inhabitants cultivated maize and imported other plant foods from lowland forests at around the time that large societies developed in the region.
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19650
This article remarks on maize starch granules being “consistent with” stone grinding. The presence of lowland arrowroot on one tool is consistent with trade, but it is equally consistent with a wandering hunter grabbing a root in the midlands and bringing it home. James ReichleQuincy, Calif.
- Animals
Cannibal Power: Mormon crickets swarm to eat and not be eaten
What keeps the great swarms of Mormon crickets rolling across the landscape may be a combination of nutritional deficits and the risk of getting cannibalized.
- Health & Medicine
Do Over: New MS drug may be safe after all
The experimental drug natalizumab, which limits relapses in patients with multiple sclerosis, may get a second chance after being withdrawn from use in 2005.
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19649
This article contained a very disturbing comment: “Neurologist Annette Langer-Gould of Stanford University says that even the 1-in-1,000 risk of PML [leukemia] ‘seems to outweigh the benefits’ that natalizumab would provide many patients.” Having a genetic mutation for which there is no treatment or cure and having (and having had) friends with MS, I am […]
- Humans
Letters from the March 4, 2006, issue of Science News
Impure thoughts Epidemiologist Scott Davis warns, “Melatonin supplements are not regulated” the way drugs are. … “There may be all kinds of impurities and contaminants” (“Bright Lights, Big Cancer: Melatonin-depleted blood spurs tumor growth,” SN: 1/7/06, p. 8). Are you really going to tell me that you aren’t going to take melatonin—if you’re convinced that […]
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Babies show budding number knowledge
By 7 months of age, babies often can tell the difference between two and three entities, at least under certain circumstances.
