Humans
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Health & Medicine
Baby’s calcium might play defining role in adult bone health
Calcium makes bones strong. But a new animal study suggests that to do this, ample calcium may need to be available from birth. Too little in the early weeks of life may reprogram certain stem cells – those in the marrow – in ways that permanently compromise bone structure. Perhaps even fostering osteoporosis.
- Health & Medicine
Body makes its own morphine
A study in mice suggests other mammals, including humans, can produce the painkiller in their bodies.
- Health & Medicine
Women of childbearing age still aren’t getting enough folic acid
To head off a risk of neural tube defects, a class of potentially devastating birth defects, women of childbearing age are supposed to get at least 400 micrograms of folic acid daily. A government study now finds that the vast majority of these women fall short. It finds that the national average for women in this age group is some 40 percent below the recommended minimum.
- Physics
Inventing the Light Fantastic
The history of the laser: An idea that began with Albert Einstein inspired a race to create a special beam of light that has since infiltrated numerous aspects of everyday life.
- Health & Medicine
Data from many drug trials for stroke go unpublished
Important details from roughly one in five drug trials for the acute treatment of the most common type of stroke have never entered the public domain, a new study finds. The masked data come from 125 trials that tested effects of 89 different drugs.
- Psychology
Dream a little dream of recall
As the sleeping brain builds memories it generates dreams about recently learned material, a new study suggests.
- Humans
Wha’dja say?
Casual speakers drop syllables and even whole words, eavesdropping scientists report.
- Agriculture
Rural ozone can be fed by feed (as in silage)
Livestock operations take a lot of flak for polluting. Researchers are now linking ozone to livestock, at least in one of the nation's most agriculturally intense centers. And here the pollution source is not what comes out the back end of an animal but what’s destined to go in the front.
- Earth
Studies aim to resolve confusion over mercury risks from fish
Several new papers suggest strategies by which American diners can negotiate a mercury minefield to tap dietary benefits in fish.
- Health & Medicine
Marker protein may help breast cancer screening
High amounts of EGFR can show up in the blood as much as 17 months before disease is diagnosed, a study finds.
- Health & Medicine
IOM: Manufacturers should help Americans cut back on salt
Americans have developed an unhealthy love affair with this savory condiment. And 40 years of haranguing people about their overconsumption has “generally failed to make a dent in Americans’ intake,” according to the Institute of Medicine, a research arm of the National Academy of Sciences. A new report it releases April 21 will ask the Food and Drug Administration to set lower ceilings on how much salt can be added to processed foods.
- Anthropology
Lice hang ancient date on first clothes
Genetic analysis puts garment origin at 190,000 years ago.
