Humans
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Life
Smell deals with deprivation differently
One odor-related brain region called the orbitofrontal cortex keeps the sense primed for resumed input during a cold.
- Humans
Good times led to grisly custom
Ancient Chileans developed artificial mummification after an increase in the numbers of living and dead people made naturally preserved bodies hard to ignore.
- Tech
Camera hack can spot cleaned-up crimes
Exploiting a standard tool of art conservation can help police find painted-over bloodstains.
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- Chemistry
Scaffolding props up failing hearts
Hydrogel treatment stimulates cell repair and blood vessel regrowth in pig experiments.
- Humans
New fossils hint at ancestral split
Jaw and face bones suggest two Homo species lived in East Africa nearly 2 million years ago.
- Health & Medicine
Thinner isn’t always better in diabetes
Normal-weight people who develop diabetes have higher mortality than people who are overweight or obese at the disease’s onset
- Humans
North African Diaspora written in genes
DNA analysis of people from 15 groups identifies distinct groups and migrations.
- Health & Medicine
Monkey brains sensitive to others’ flubs
Some of the brain’s nerve cells are programmed to light up only upon witnessing another’s error.
- Life
Rabies resistance arises in backwater thick with vampire bats
Residents of two remote Peruvian communities appear to have survived infection by the deadly virus.
- Animals
Epidemic of skin lesions reported in reef fish
A British-Australian research team has just found coral trout living on the south side of the Great Barrier Reef sporting dark skin raised, scablike, brown-black growths. Although the authors believe they’ve stumbled onto an epidemic of melanoma — a type of skin cancer — other experts have their doubts. Strong ones.
- Health & Medicine
Alzheimer’s protein could help in MS
A-beta, the same molecule that has been tied to dementia when it accumulates in the brain, appears to reduce damage when introduced to the bodies of mice with symptoms of multiple sclerosis.
