Humans
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Health & Medicine
Salmonella seeks sweets
A sugarlike substance in the roots of lettuce may attract food-poisoning bacteria.
- Health & Medicine
Earache microbe shows resistance
A strain of bacterium that causes middle ear infection is resistant to all antibiotics currently approved for the ailment.
- Health & Medicine
Mother Knows All
Fragments of a fetus' genetic material that leak into a pregnant woman's bloodstream reveal details of early fetal development.
- Humans
Letters from the November 10, 2007, issue of Science News
Thinking it through Bjorn Merker says that “the tacit consensus concerning the cerebral cortex as the ‘organ of consciousness’ … may in fact be seriously in error” (“Consciousness in the Raw,” SN: 9/15/07, p. 170). But the real tacit consensus is that the cerebral cortex is the organ of conceptual consciousness, of thinking and reasoning, […]
- Humans
From the October 30, 1937, issue
A photographer captures the coming of winter, motion pictures show how cancer spreads through the blood, and engineers get new oil from old Pennsylvania wells.
- Health & Medicine
Plugging Leaks: Manipulating receptors may impede sepsis
Manipulation of signaling proteins on blood vessels may help combat sepsis, an often fatal condition.
- Health & Medicine
Early Arrival: HIV came from Haiti to United States
New analysis of 25-year-old blood samples indicates that HIV reached the United States in about 1969, 12 years before AIDS was first formally described.
- Anthropology
DNA to Neandertals: Lighten up
DNA analysis indicates that some Neandertals may have had a gene for pale skin and red hair.
- Anthropology
Fossil Sparks
Two new fossil discoveries and an analysis of ancient teeth challenge traditional assumptions about ape and human evolution.
- Humans
Letters from the November 3, 2007, issue of Science News
Waste not, want not “Cellulose Dreams” (SN: 8/25/07, p. 120) ignored important research by David Tilman and Jason Hill of the University of Minnesota. They found that planting a crop of 18 different native prairie plants grown in highly degraded and infertile soil with little fertilizer or chemicals yielded substantially more bioenergy than a single […]
- Humans
From the October 23, 1937, issue
Soviet hydroelectricity powers electric farm equipment, breeding programs create rats with cancer resistance and rabbits with an extra rib, and artificial fertilization is made to work in fruit flies.
- Anthropology
Not So Clear-Cut: Soil erosion may not have led to Mayan downfall
Hand-planted maize, beans, and squash sustained the Mayans for millennia, until their culture collapsed about 1,100 years ago. Some researchers have suggested that the Mayans’ very success in turning forests into farmland led to soil erosion that made farming increasingly difficult and eventually caused their downfall. But a new study of ancient lake sediments has […]
