Humans
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Health & Medicine
Virus Attack on Cancer: Heat makes neglected technology work better
Adding heat sensitizes tumor cells to the effects of a genetically modified virus, which then can kill them.
- Health & Medicine
From Famine, Schizophrenia: Starvation gives birth to personality disorder
Women who go severely hungry during early pregnancy face twice the normal risk of having a child who develops schizophrenia in adulthood.
- Humans
Letters from the August 6, 2005, issue of Science News
Empty threat? “Empty Nets: Fisheries may be crippling themselves by targeting the big ones” (SN: 6/4/05, p. 360) reads as if there is something to be alarmed about. By selectively catching large fish, we have reduced “the mean size [of food fish to] one-fifth of what it was.” This is not cause for alarm. It […]
- Health & Medicine
Coming Soon—Broccoli and Peach ‘Seaweeds’
California researchers are developing fruit- and vegetable-based surrogates for a paperlike seaweed product, typically used in sushi, to brighten foods and infuse them with all-natural nutrients.
- Health & Medicine
King George III should have sued
The madness of England's King George III may have been partly due to arsenic poisoning.
- Health & Medicine
Lyme microbe forms convenient bond with tick protein
The bacterium that causes Lyme disease commandeers a gene in the deer tick, inducing overproduction of a salivary protein that the bacterium uses to escape immune detection once it's inside a mammal.
- Anthropology
The Human Wave
Anatomically modern people evolved in small groups of ancient Homo sapiens that never traveled too far but continually interbred with nearby groups, including other Homo species, creating a genetic wave that moved from Africa across Asia, a new model suggests.
- Humans
From the July 27, 1935, issue
The geometry of honeycombs, high-energy, man-made gamma rays, and an electrical speed trap.
- Health & Medicine
Echinacea Disappoints: There’s still no cure for the common cold
The folk remedy echinacea shows no benefit against the common cold.
- Health & Medicine
How ‘Green’ Is Home Cooking?
From an environmental perspective, made-from-scratch meals aren't much better than ready-to-eat, store-bought meals are in consuming fewer resources and contributing less to pollution.
- Humans
Letters from the July 30, 2005, issue of Science News
Led astray The illustration of the solar system in “Roaming Giants: Did migrating planets shape the solar system?” (SN: 5/28/05, p. 340) does not represent the current orbit of the planets. Rather, it must be a frame from the computer simulation referred to in the article. William MeadowsDripping Springs, Texas Indeed, the image reflects the […]
- Archaeology
Judeo-Christian ties buried in Rome
New radiocarbon dates from one of ancient Rome's underground cemeteries, or catacombs, indicates that these structures were built in the Jewish community more than a century before early Christians started to do the same.
