Humans

Health & Medicine

Changing the paradigm around Alzheimer’s disease

Prevention could begin with lifestyle in younger years, one researcher says during the American Public Health Association meeting.

Health & Medicine

Chill-out device may protect brain during heart attacks

A portable method to quickly lower body temperature passes safety tests

Anthropology

For Hadza, build and brawn don’t matter for choosing mates

Study of hunter-gatherer community in Tanzania shows that, across human groups, mating criteria vary.

Humans

Record chills are falling, but in number only

Weather-monitoring stations in the Lower 48 have been logging record daily highs in temperature at twice the pace of record lows. Yet more evidence of climate warming. Many people have pointed to colder than normal winters — or summers — as evidence that global warming is a myth. Climatologists have countered that weather, the meteorological features that we experience at any given hour or day, may show anomalies even as Earth’s overall climate warms. So weather can locally mask the planet’s overall slowly rising fever. Except that any such mask appears to be disappearing throughout most of the United States, according to a new study.

Life

Newborn cells clear space in brain’s memory-maker

Rodent study offers first evidence that neurogenesis clears old memories in key part of the brain to make way for new ones.

Life

Genetic effects suggest FOXP2 role in language evolution

Human version of the protein alters activity of 116 genes compared with the chimp version.

Science & Society

Why Cousteau’s granddaughter was at a meeting on public health

Philadelphia — On brainstorming possible keynote speakers for a major public health conference, the granddaughter of ocean giant Jacques Cousteau does not exactly stand out. But in Philadelphia on Sunday, filmmaker and diver Celine Cousteau stood before the 11,000 or so attendees of the American Public Health Association's annual meeting to explain just why exactly she was there to give the opening session's address.

Earth

Buried-lakes story wins top award

Some readers may be unaware of our sister publication, Science News for Kids, a weekly online magazine for middle-school readers. This morning, we learned that one of the site’s feature stories — Where Rivers Run Uphill — won this year’s top science journalism award for reporting news for children.

Health & Medicine

The childhood nerve cancer neuroblastoma shows weakness

A compound that unshackles a tumor-suppressing protein called p53 can slow the growth of the malignancy in mice, a new study finds.

Climate

Guarded optimism on Copenhagen climate talks

Negotiators representing 181 nations completed their final prep work in Barcelona, Spain, last Friday, on a new climate treaty — one that they hope to build a month from now at a major conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. But at least one scientist worries that what comes out of the Copenhagen deliberations may not have sufficient coordination and strength to meet the challenges that Earth’s climate has begun throwing at us.

Health & Medicine

Vinegar: Label lead-tainting data

Under California’s Proposition 65 law, products containing chemicals that may cause cancer, birth defects or reproductive toxicity must carry a warning label at their point of sale. Among such products: pricy balsamic and red-wine vinegars that contain lead. At least some California groceries apparently have taken a conservative approach and post labels suggesting all such vinegars are dangerously tainted. Although they aren't.

Health & Medicine

H1N1: Call to revise flu-mask policy

Three groups of healthcare professionals sent a letter to President Obama yesterday asking that he instruct his administration to revise federal flu-mask guidance. What these groups want: formal recognition that two studies last month showed conventional surgical masks are about as protective as the fancy — but much more expensive — N95 respirators in limiting H1N1 infection.