Humans
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Health & Medicine
No fear
A woman who lacks a basic brain structure, the amygdala, couldn’t be frightened no matter how hard researchers tried. And they tried.
- Health & Medicine
Gene linked to some smokers’ lung cancer
FGFR1 is amped up in a subset of cancers; inhibiting its proteins can shrink tumors in mice.
- Health & Medicine
Salvia says high
Laboratory researchers show that the psychoactive substance in a popular, largely legal recreational drug causes a short but intense period of hallucination.
- Humans
Apartments share tobacco smoke
Children in nonsmoking families have higher levels of secondhand exposure if they live in multifamily dwellings.
- Life
Cells reprogrammed to treat diabetes
The testes may be an alternate source of insulin production.
- Life
Rooting for swarm intelligence in plants
Researchers argue for a type of vegetative group decision making usually associated with humans and social animals, and go out on a limb by also proposing that information may be transmitted electrically.
- Psychology
Face memory peaks late, after age 30
Striking an unanticipated blow for mature thinkers, 30- to 34-year-olds have the best face memory.
- Health & Medicine
A protein’s ebb and flow
Buildup in the brain of a protein linked to Alzheimer's disease may be due to reduced clearance rather than overproduction of the protein.
- Tech
Dirty money 2: Expect traces of BPA
BPA showed up on 21 of the 22 greenbacks surveyed in a new study. And the clean dollar? It appeared quite new, suggesting that dollars only become contaminated as they circulate.
- Life
Jigsaw genetics
Fragments of a fetus's genome can be pieced together from the mother's blood to allow prenatal diagnosis of genetic diseases.
- Health & Medicine
New blood test may predict some heart risk
People carrying high levels of a protein called cardiac troponin T are more likely to have heart failure or die from cardiovascular problems, two studies show.
- Tech
Terrorist-resistant ‘source’ of moly-99 hits the U.S.
Molybdenum-99 is the radioactive feedstock for the most widely used diagnostic nuclear-medicine isotope. On December 6, the first commercial batch of moly-99 that had been produced using a terrorist-resistant process arrived in the United States from a reactor in South Africa.
