Uncategorized
- Health & Medicine
Making Sense of Centenarians
The number of centenarians is expected to double every ten years, making this formerly rare group one of the fastest-growing in the developed world. Researchers are turning to studies of the oldest old to determine how genes, lifestyle, and social factors contribute to longevity.
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18906
As an old noncentenarian, I was getting along very well with “Making sense of centenarians” until I reached Thomas Perls’ remark: “My hope is that we will actually see the development [from genetic research] of medications . . . .” I will bet your great-grandmother survived very well with the least medication possible. It seems […]
- Health & Medicine
New drug to treat blood poisoning
For the first time, a drug has reduced deaths from severe sepsis, a life-threatening immune reaction occurring in 750,000 people in the United States each year.
- Health & Medicine
Less morphine may be more
In mice, very low doses of morphine combined with even lower doses of a drug that usually blocks morphine's effect can give greater pain relief than higher doses of morphine alone.
- Anthropology
Yanomami inquiry moves forward
The American Anthropological Association has launched a formal inquiry into the highly publicized allegations of scientific misconduct by anthropologists and others working in South America among the Yanomami Indians.
- Anthropology
Chimps grasp at social identities
Researchers contend that neighboring communities of wild chimpanzees develop distinctive styles of mutual grooming to identify fellow group members and foster social solidarity.
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18905
“Jiggling the cosmic ooze” states that Leon Lederman won the Nobel prize in 1988 for “codiscovering the muon.” It is a small error, but more correctly, Lederman won the Nobel prize for codiscovering the mu neutrino. The muon was discovered in cosmic rays in 1937–1938 by researchers using cloud-chamber techniques. Peter B. Kahn State University […]
- Physics
Jiggling the Cosmic Ooze
Spurred by the first tentative sightings after a decades-old search, physicists seeking the universe's mass-giving particle — the Higgs boson — have fired up the world's highest-energy particle collider to join the pursuit.
- Health & Medicine
Two genes tied to common birth defect
Researchers report that defects in either of two specific genes may be responsible for DiGeorge syndrome, the second most common cause of congenital heart defects in newborns.
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Baboon rumps signal quality of motherhood
The size of the swellings on a female baboon’s rump match her physical prowess for motherhood, a rare case of reproductive-quality advertisement in females.
- Earth
Is there a vent in the global greenhouse?
Satellite observations of ocean temperatures in tropical regions of the western Pacific suggest that when ocean temperatures there warm up, the amount of heat-trapping cirrus clouds decreases, possibly providing a heat-venting effect that could help reduce global warming.
- Planetary Science
Debate over life in Mars rock rekindles
Two recent studies could inject new life into the argument that a 4-billion-year-old Martian meteorite contains fossils of bacteria from the Red Planet but several scientists say the reports fall short of resurrecting that notion.
