Uncategorized
- 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.
By Nathan Seppa -
19005
Your article reports that, after infancy, humans have trouble recognizing facial differences between members of other species. Many of us commonly observe that people of other races than ourselves “all look alike” to us. Could this stem from lack of early exposure to others? Anecdotally, my wife, raised in a multiracial environment, has far less […]
By Science News -
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 […]