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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.
By Bruce Bower - Health & Medicine
A Model Mouse
Mice with symptoms similar to rheumatoid arthritis may illuminate the puzzling disorder.
By John Travis - 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.
By Ben Harder - 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.
By Ben Harder -
19004
This article reported surprise in some at the power of placebos to improve depression. From a psychological perspective, the antidote to depression involves increasing experiences of nurturance and hope in a person anticipating a future that’s empty and depleting. What’s a placebo but food that a depressed person hopes will fix things? Could it possibly […]
By Science News -
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.
By Bruce Bower - 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.
By Nathan Seppa - 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.
By Janet Raloff - Math
A Lawyer’s Math Library
“Strangely enough, anyone wishing to write about Galois in Paris would do well to journey to Louisville, Kentucky.”–Leopold Infeld, Whom the Gods Love LOUISVILLE, KY. French mathematician Evariste Galois (1811–1832), whose death in a duel at the age of 20 cut short a remarkably productive career, is only one of many mathematicians represented in a […]
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From the May 14, 1932, issue
DOVE ORCHID MAKES FITTING FLOWER FOR WHITSUNDAY Sunday, May 15, is the Feast of Pentecost, or Whitsunday, when many of the churches commemorate the descent of the Holy Spirit. In the lands of tropical America, where delicate orchids can be had by anybody, many an imaginative Latin will mingle poetry with his piety as he […]
By Science News -
Spying Natural Hazards
NASA’s Earth Observatory Web site offers spectacular satellite images of natural hazards around the world–just about as they happen. Continually updated, the site focuses on wildfires, severe storms, floods, volcanic eruptions, and major air-pollution events, such as dust storms, smog, and smoke. Go to: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/
By Science News - Math
Song-and-Dance Fermat
The proof of a mathematical conjecture–even one as famous as Fermat’s last theorem–may sound like an improbable subject for an off-Broadway-style musical. Yet there’s plenty of drama and passion in the story of Fermat’s last theorem. These elements take center stage in Fermat’s Last Tango, a musical written by the husband-and-wife team Joshua Rosenblum and […]