Humans
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Psychology
Grief takes its toll
A person’s risk of heart attack or stroke is doubled in the month following the death of a spouse or partner.
- Health & Medicine
Diet fix eases Huntington’s symptoms in mice
Supplement improves health of rodents with mutation that causes neurodegeneration like that seen in Huntington’s disease.
- Psychology
Your fear is written all over your face, in heat
Thermal images of bank clerks who’ve been robbed reveal a cold nose can be a sign of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.
- Life
With Taxol, chromosomes divide and get conquered
New mechanism discovered for how the cancer drug Taxol works.
- Health & Medicine
Early treatment may stave off esophageal cancer
Zapping precancerous tissue in patients with Barrett’s esophagus might reduce incidence of cancer.
- Health & Medicine
Telling kids lies may teach them to lie
In a new study, kids who were told a lie were more likely to later tell a fib themselves. The results should encourage parents not to lie to their kids.
- Health & Medicine
E-cigarettes don’t help smokers quit, study finds
People who tried e-cigarettes no more likely to give up smoking a year later.
- Humans
Former baseball players have big, strong bones in old age
Decades later, health benefits of exercise persist in male athletes’ bones.
- Health & Medicine
Sudden death
Cardiologists disagree on whether electrocardiograms should be used to screen student athletes for a rare heart condition that can cause them to die suddenly and without warning.
- Health & Medicine
Small molecule makes brain cancer cells collapse and die
A small molecule, Vacquinol-1, may provide a different way to target and kill cells in glioblastomas, a type of brain tumor.
- Climate
Climate change may spread Lyme disease
The territory of the ticks that transmit Lyme disease is growing as the climate warms.
- Genetics
Early Polynesians didn’t go to Americas, chicken DNA hints
Contamination of ancient chicken DNA may explain previous report linking Polynesians to South America.
