Humans
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Anthropology
Mystery Drilling: Ancient teeth endured dental procedures
Researchers have discovered the oldest known examples of dental work, 11 teeth with drilled holes dating to between 9,000 and 7,500 years ago.
- Health & Medicine
Polyp Stopper: Controversial drug may prevent colon growths
An anti-inflammatory drug currently prescribed for arthritis and pain can prevent formation of precancerous growths in the colon and rectum.
- Health & Medicine
See Blind Mice: Algae gene makes sightless eyes sense light
Scientists have prompted mouse-eye cells that aren't normally light sensitive to respond to light.
- Health & Medicine
Experimental drug targets Alzheimer’s
A novel drug reverses some Alzheimer's-type symptoms in mice.
- Humans
Two-fifths of Amazonian forest is at risk
The Amazon basin's forest may lose 2.1 million square kilometers by 2050 if current development trends go unabated.
- Anthropology
Chimps scratch out grooming requests
Pairs of adult males in a community of wild African chimps often communicate with gestures.
- Health & Medicine
Parasite can’t survive without its tail
The protozoan that causes African sleeping sickness can't survive in the mammalian bloodstream without its long, whiplike tail.
- Humans
From the March 28, 1936, issue
A flooded Washington, D.C., a giant stellar explosion, and three new nebulae.
- Health & Medicine
XXL from Too Few Zs? Skimping on sleep might cause obesity, diabetes
Widespread sleep deprivation could partly explain the current epidemics of both obesity and diabetes.
- Humans
Letters from the April 1, 2006, issue of Science News
The prion game I must quibble about the headline of the piece about chronic wasting disease in deer (“Hunter Beware: Infectious proteins found in deer muscle,” SN: 1/28/06, p. 52). “Hunter Beware” sounds ominous, but in order to get the mice to exhibit symptoms after getting muscle tissue from infected deer, it was necessary to […]
- Health & Medicine
On a dare, teen advances medical science
A 16-year-old daredevil inadvertently demonstrated the incubation period of a common roundworm after she swallowed an earthworm that harbored larvae of the parasite.
- Health & Medicine
Meat Poses Exaggerated Cancer Risk for Some People
Animal research probes why a genetic vulnerability renders some individuals especially susceptible to the colon carcinogens that can form in cooked meats.
