Humans
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Health & Medicine
Nongene DNA boosts AIDS risk
People with a newly discovered genetic variation are more vulnerable to HIV infection.
- Humans
Burdens of knowledge
Greater understanding of the role of genetics in human diseases presents scientists with ethical dilemmas.
- 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 […]
