Humans
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Earth
Green-ish pesticides bee-devil honey makers
Pesticides are agents designed to rid targeted portions of the human environment of undesirable critters – such as boll weevils, roaches or carpenter ants. They’re not supposed to harm beneficials. Like bees. Yet a new study from China finds that two widely used pyrethroid pesticides – chemicals that are rather “green” as bug killers go – can significantly impair the pollinators’ reproduction.
- Life
Mature females key to beluga sturgeon survival
Hatchery fish are unlikely to restore caviar-producing fish populations, a new assessment finds.
- Earth
Fowl surprise! Methylmercury improves hatching rate
A pinch of methylmercury is just ducky for mallard reproduction, according to a new federal study. The findings are counterintuitive, since methylmercury is ordinarily a potent neurotoxic pollutant.
- Psychology
Alcohol distills aggression in large men
A new study suggests that the ‘big, mean drunk guy’ stereotype contains some truth.
- Life
Researchers distinguish two different types of blood stem cells
Working in mice, scientists find that red and white blood cells arise from different progenitors.
- Health & Medicine
Old drug may be first choice for childhood petit mal epilepsy
Three-way trial shows ethosuximide edging out two newer choices.
- Chemistry
Plasticizers kept from leaching out
‘Chemicals of concern’ may be made safer in new materials.
- Agriculture
Frogs: Clues to how weed killer may feminize males
Atrazine, a widely used agricultural herbicide, not only can alter hormone levels in the developing frogs, but also perturb their physical development — and lead to an excess number of females, researchers report. Their new findings may help explain observations reported by a number of other research groups that at least in frogs, fairly low concentrations of atrazine can induce a feminization — or demasculinization.
- Health & Medicine
Coffee not linked to heart arrhythmia
A large survey of insured people finds no extra hospitalizations in java swillers.
- Archaeology
Stone Age engraving traditions appear on ostrich eggshells
Fragments indicate symbolic communication on 60,000-year-old water containers.
- Humans
Titanic study: It takes time to do the right thing
Comparing the Titanic and Lusitania disasters suggests that people in a crisis are more likely to maintain social norms if they have longer to react.
- Earth
Frogs: Weed killer creates real Mr. Moms
Several months back, a Berkeley undergraduate began witnessing distinctly odd behavior in frogs she was caring for in the lab. At about 18-months old, some frisky guys began regularly mounting tank mates, as if to copulate. Except that their chosen partner was invariably male. He had to be. Because genetically, every animal in the tank was male.
