Humans
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Health & Medicine
Fast Start: Sex readily spreads HIV in infection’s first weeks
People with HIV are many times more infectious to their sexual partners in the weeks or months just after they acquire the virus than they are later on, a study in Uganda demonstrates conclusively.
- Anthropology
These spines were made for walking
A new analysis of fossil backbones indicates that human ancestors living around 3 million years ago were able to walk much as people today do.
- Anthropology
Noses didn’t need cold to evolve
Neandertals evolved big, broad noses not in response to a cold climate, as has often been argued, but in conjunction with the expansion of their upper jaws.
- Health & Medicine
Step up to denser bones
Step aerobics proved better than resistance exercises for building bone density.
- Health & Medicine
Company pulls pain drug from market
The Food and Drug Administration has asked Pfizer to stop selling its prescription pain medication valdecoxib (Bextra).
- Health & Medicine
Is Chromium in Your Mineral Supplement?
As a new study on chromium illustrates, the value of a mineral supplement can depend greatly on which chemical form of the mineral a manufacturer uses.
- Humans
From the April 13, 1935, issue
A giant meteorite discovered in Kansas, gasoline made from coal in Germany, and elastic rock layers deep in the earth.
- Anthropology
Stone Age Cutups: Deathly rituals emerge at Neandertal site
A new analysis of 130,000-year-old fossils found in a Croatian cave a century ago suggests that Neandertals ritually cut up corpses of their comrades and perhaps engaged in cannibalism.
- Health & Medicine
Messy Mix? Combined vaccine yields fewer antibodies
Some common childhood vaccines don't seem to work as well when administered with, or at the same time as, other vaccines.
- Humans
Letters from the April 16, 2005, issue of Science News
Ax questions, hard answers Another hypothesis for the polish on the Stone Age corundum ax head is that the Stone Age people never had absolutely pure corundum, which indeed would have required diamond to polish (“In the Buff: Stone Age tools may have derived luster from diamond,” SN: 2/19/05, p. 116). It is possible that […]
- Health & Medicine
Smelly garlic: A lung tonic?
Fresh garlic or its powdered equivalent might prevent a potentially lethal condition in which pulmonary blood pressure is selectively elevated.
- Health & Medicine
Blood hints at autism’s source
A new biochemical profile in blood may lead to earlier diagnosis of autism and a better understanding of its genetic causes.
