Humans
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Health & Medicine
Not-So-Artful Dodgers: Countering drug tests with niacin proves dangerous
Attempts to cleanse illicit drugs from one's body by taking large doses of niacin can cause life-threatening reactions.
- Anthropology
Asian Trek: Fossil puts ancient humans in Far East
A 40,000-year-old partial human skeleton from a Chinese cave intensifies a debate over whether Stone Age people dispersing from Africa interbred with humanlike species that they encountered.
- Health & Medicine
Crusty Chemistry
Chemists report simple ways to tweak the recipe and make a whole wheat pizza crust potentially healthier.
- Health & Medicine
Meningitis vaccine stops ear infections
A vaccine for meningitis and pneumonia also prevents many childhood ear infections and the complications that they cause.
- Health & Medicine
Patches take sting out of canker sores
Small patches that exude licorice extract can speed healing of canker sores.
- Health & Medicine
A Gasping Heart
A common imperfection in the structure of the heart may exacerbate obstructive sleep apnea and, in mountaineers, trigger a life-threatening lung condition called high-altitude pulmonary edema.
- Humans
Letters from the April 7, 2007, issue of Science News
Winter wonders The theory of “nuclear winter” was originally put forward by an Eastern European mathematician in the 1980s (“Sudden Chill,” SN: 2/3/07, p. 72). Some months later, it was shown that an error in his original calculations so vastly exaggerated “nuclear winter” as to make it meaningless. Still, the dramatic concept of a “nuclear […]
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- Health & Medicine
Asthma Zap: Heated scope reduces attacks
A new tool cools asthma by heating lung tissue to kill overgrown smooth muscle in airways, a hallmark of the disease.
- Humans
Chasing money for science
Stagnant funding for the National Institutes of Health is forcing scientists to downsize their labs and abandon some of their most promising work.
- Health & Medicine
Working in a cotton mill has bright side
People who work amid bales of raw cotton are less likely to get lung cancer than are people in the general population, a study of Chinese women indicates. While past research has shown that workers in a cotton mill tend to develop shortness of breath, chronic cough, and other health problems, some scientists also noted […]
- Humans
Letters from the March 31, 2007, issue of Science News
On the hoof Do cows and other domestic-herd animals really emit more methane than bison and other wild-herd animals emitted before people came along? Do grass, alfalfa, and other pasture plants remove less carbon dioxide than do forests? There were open grasslands before pastures replaced some forests. I hope the people who are researching these […]
