Humans

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We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

  1. Life

    Staggered lessons may work better

    Training at irregular intervals improves learning in sea snails.

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  2. Humans

    Network analysis predicts drug side effects

    A computer technique can foresee adverse events before medications are widely prescribed.

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  3. Humans

    Researchers, journals asked to censor data

    Scientists undertake research to advance knowledge. Normally, one aspect of that advancement is to find as broad an audience for the newly acquired data as possible. But what happens if medically important data could be put to ruthless purposes? That question underlies the ruckus developing over two new bird flu papers.

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  4. Humans

    Fewer fires in Africa these days

    How flames spread, not how frequently people start them, controls burning on the continent.

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  5. Humans

    Smells like a bear raid

    Analysis of stock trading data suggests an effort to manipulate the market in 2007.

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  6. Psychology

    Face deficit holds object lesson

    A brain-damaged man yields controversial clues to how people identify complex objects.

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  7. Humans

    Uncommitted newbies can foil forceful few

    Decisions more democratic when individuals with no preset preference join a group.

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  8. Health & Medicine

    Gene therapy helps counter hemophilia B

    Treatment enables cells to produce a key blood-clotting compound, allowing some patients to quit medication.

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  9. Humans

    Tools of a kind

    People in southern Arabia around 100,000 years ago made tools like those of East Africans.

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  10. Life

    He’s no rat, he’s my brother

    Rodents exhibit empathy by setting trapped friends free.

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  11. Health & Medicine

    Bedbugs not averse to inbreeding

    The pests have also developed ways to resist common insecticides, research shows.

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  12. Health & Medicine

    Presidency not a death sentence

    For occupants of the Oval Office, wealth, status and quality medical care more than compensate for any life-shortening effects of stress.

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