Humans
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Health & Medicine
A chink in flu’s armor
Finding the shape of a protein that enables the flu virus to replicate points to ways to combat the disease.
- Psychology
Core calculations
Number words may serve as mental tools for expanding on basic, nonverbal numerical knowledge rather than as determinants of such knowledge.
- Chemistry
Oil magnets
Featured blog: Nanomagnets and wires point to a potentially better mousetrap — or crude trap — for dealing with oil spills.
- Humans
Toddlers triumphant
In new studies, toddlers display dramatic advances in object recognition that may underlie verbal and symbolic achievements.
- Ecosystems
Fish Houses
Tanked half-way houses allow people and fish to get acquainted on their own terms — and exhibit their individual personalities.
- Health & Medicine
Protein links metabolism and circadian rhythms
Scientists have known for ages that metabolism is tied to the body’s daily rhythms. Two new studies suggest how.
- Health & Medicine
New HIV inhibitor
A new HIV drug can, when combined with other therapies, suppress even the most drug-resistant strains of the virus that causes AIDS, scientists report in two papers in the July 24 New England Journal of Medicine.
- Health & Medicine
Statin snag
A gene variant explains why some people get muscle pains from cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins.
- Health & Medicine
Viagra and women
Viagra eases some sexual problems for women taking antidepressants
- Math
A building of bubbles
Math Trek: The National Aquatics Center in Beijing, newly built for the Olympics, is a glowing cube of bubbles. The mathematics behind it are built around Lord Kelvin's tetrakaidecahedra and the physics of foam.
- Agriculture
Starved for Science: How Biotechnology is Being Kept Out of Africa
by Robert Paarlberg, Harvard Univ. Press, 2008, 235 p., $24.95.
-
