Humans
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Ecosystems
Athlete’s foot therapy tapped to treat bat-killing fungus
Over the past four years, a mysterious white-nose fungus has struck hibernating North American bats. Populations in affected caves and mines can experience death rates of more than 80 percent over a winter. In desperation, an informal interagency task force of scientists from state and federal agencies has just launched an experimental program to fight the plague. Their weapon: a drug ordinarily used to treat athlete’s foot.
- Anthropology
Ancient footprints yield oldest signs of upright gait
Human ancestors may have been walking with an efficient, extended-leg technique by 3.6 million years ago.
- Health & Medicine
Ingredient of dark roasted coffees may make them easier on the tummy
A compound generated in the roasting process appears to reduce acid production in the stomach.
- Chemistry
Cool roof coating: Mechanism kept under wraps
The American Chemical Society held a news briefing March 21 to feature a new energy-saving technology. It’s an ostensibly “smart” coating for roofing materials that knows when to reflect heat, like in summer time, and when to instead let the sun’s rays help heat a structure.
- Plants
Bees face ‘unprecedented’ pesticide exposures at home and afield
Honey bees are being hammered by some mysterious environmental plaque that has a name — colony collapse disorder – but no established cause. A two-year study now provides evidence indicting one likely group of suspects: pesticides. It found “unprecedented levels” of mite-killing chemicals and crop pesticides in hives across the United States and parts of Canada.
- Anthropology
Farming’s rise cultivated fair deals
A cross-cultural study suggests that the spread of farming unleashed a revolution in concepts of fairness and punishment.
- Physics
Next on CSI: Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy
The modification of a powerful chemical analysis technique could make it the gold standard in detecting trace substances.
- Math
Big or small, financial bubbles burst alike
New data from the Frankfurt stock exchange show that fleeting financial bubbles behave according to the same mathematical rules as history-making ones.
- Health & Medicine
Experimental blood pressure drug takes natural approach
Dual-action compound tests well in large group of people with mild to moderate hypertension
- Health & Medicine
Vitamin D is a flu fighter
Japanese researchers offer tangible support for that idea that vitamin D deficiency might render people vulnerable to infections. Supplementing school children with the vitamin, they showed, dramatically cut their incidence of seasonal flu.
- Life
To catch a thief, follow his filthy hands
Bacteria from a person’s hands may provide a new type of fingerprint.
- Psychology
Soothing start to childhood weight problems
Pacifying infants with food may raise likelihood of later obesity.
