Humans
- Humans
Letters from the Feb. 14, 2004, issue of Science News
Revealing words “Bookish Math: Statistical tests are unraveling knotty literary mysteries” (SN: 12/20&27/03, p. 392: Bookish Math) skipped one of the most significant methods for analyzing text for authorship. On March 11, 1887, Thomas Corwin Mendenhall reported in Science a straightforward method of plotting word length versus frequency. The beauty of this method is that […]
- Anthropology
Some Primates’ Sheltered Lives: Baboons, chimps enter the realm of cave
In separate studies, researchers have gathered the first systematic evidence showing that baboons and chimpanzees regularly use caves, a behavior many anthropologists have attributed only to people and our direct ancestors.
- Health & Medicine
Pregnancy Alert: Proteins may predict preeclampsia
Blood concentrations of two proteins that affect blood vessel growth appear to foretell the pregnancy condition known as preeclampsia.
- Anthropology
European find gets Stone Age date
A new radiocarbon analysis indicates that a skeleton found more than a century ago in an Italian cave dates to around 26,400 to 23,200 years ago.
- Health & Medicine
Virus might explain respiratory ailments
Human metapneumovirus, first isolated in 2001, is present in many respiratory infections that had previously gone unexplained.
- Health & Medicine
Calcium Superchargers
Foods such as yogurts supplemented with fiberlike sugars are developing into the latest wave in functional foods–commercial goods seeded with ingredients that boost their nutritiousness or healthfulness. Makers of foods doctored with these unusual, nearly flavorless sugars claim that their products improve the body’s absorption of calcium in the diet, thereby offering bones a treat. […]
- Health & Medicine
Early Warning? Inflammatory protein is tied to colon cancer risk
C-reactive protein, an inflammatory protein linked to heart disease, might also signal susceptibility to colon cancer.
- Humans
Letters from the Feb. 7, 2004, issue of Science News.
Warm topic I was fascinated by the article on heat production in flowers (“Warm-Blooded Plants?” SN: 12/13/03, p. 379: Warm-Blooded Plants?). It speculated on the evolutionary origins of such thermogenesis and observed how it predominates in ancient lineages of flowering plants like magnolias and water lilies. But thermogenesis goes back much farther than this, for […]
- Health & Medicine
Malaria drug boosts recovery rates
Adding the herbal-extract drug artesunate to standard malaria treatment reduces the relapse rate, even in areas where the malaria parasite is resistant to standard drugs.
- Health & Medicine
Aging protein saps muscle strength
Proteins crucial for muscle strength begin to function poorly as rats get older.
- Health & Medicine
HIV outwits immune system, again
The AIDS virus uses immune system proteins to hitch rides on the antibody factories known as B cells, possibly helping it find potential host cells.
- Health & Medicine
Bacteria Provide a Frontline Defense
Bacteria genetically engineered to secrete microbe-killing compounds can fight disease in mice and rats.
