Humans
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Health & Medicine
Sun Struck: Data suggest skin cancer epidemic looms
The incidence of non-melanoma skin cancers in young adults is mushrooming, possibly heralding an epidemic in follow-up cancers during the coming decades.
- Humans
Letters from the August 13, 2005, issue of Science News
Bay listen It was interesting to read of processing mundane noise to produce an ultrasound image of the geology of Los Angeles (“Seismic noise can yield maps of Earth’s crust,” SN: 6/11/05, p. 382). A big question in the state is the deep structure of San Francisco Bay. Clearly, the bay and the valleys extending […]
- Health & Medicine
After terror, moms’ stress affects kids
Infants born to women who developed posttraumatic stress disorder during pregnancy have unusually low concentrations of the hormone cortisol.
- Health & Medicine
Siccing Fungi on Malaria
Two independent research teams have found that fungi can kill mosquitoes or reduce the efficiency with which they transmit the malaria parasite.
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- Humans
Space Woes: NASA programs reel from shuttle problems
Technological problems for NASA's space shuttle Discovery, such as falling foam and dangling insulation, are causing safety worries and throwing a crimp into the U.S. space program.
- 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.
