Humans
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We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Humans
Caring for a Historic House
The National Park Service offers advice on taking care of the exterior—or skin—of an old home. From repairing shingles and fixing chimneys to painting trim and improving site drainage, this online course provides handy pointers about what to do and what not to do to keep an historic house in good shape. Go to: http://www2.cr.nps.gov/tps/roofdown/index.htm
By Science News - Humans
Letters from the July 17, 2004, issue of Science News
Readers on reading Other librarians and I regularly discuss illiterate, functional, aliterate, and avid readers. I am pleased that research has begun into what happens in readers’ brains (“Words in the Brain: Reading program spurs neural rewrite in kids,” SN: 5/8/04, p. 291: Words in the Brain: Reading program spurs neural rewrite in kids). The […]
By Science News - Health & Medicine
Four die of rabies in transplanted tissues
Four people who received tissue transplanted from a man who had died from an undiagnosed rabies infection have since themselves died from the same incurable neurological disease.
By Ben Harder - Humans
The high cost of staying current
Reading peer-reviewed journals remains a primary means by which researchers stay on top of developments in their fields, but the annual costs for these periodicals are steep.
By Janet Raloff - Health & Medicine
Counting Carbs
Although low-carbohydrate diets can be powerful weight-loss tools, many physicians now conclude they aren't for anyone who isn't under a doctor's watchful eye.
By Janet Raloff - Humans
From the July 7, 1934, issue
Fireworks in Fairyland, controlling the sex of warm-blooded animals, and deadly atmospheres on Jupiter and Saturn.
By Science News - Health & Medicine
Don’t Expect Too Much of Soy
Two new studies find soy isn't an effective hormone-replacement alternative for postmenopausal women.
By Janet Raloff - Anthropology
Living Long in the Tooth: Grandparents may have rocked late Stone Age
A new analysis of fossil teeth indicates that the number of people surviving long enough to become grandparents dramatically increased about 30,000 years ago.
By Bruce Bower - Archaeology
Mexican murals store magnetic data
Tiny magnetic particles in the pigments of some Mexican murals recorded the direction of Earth's magnetic field when the paint dried.
By Sid Perkins - Health & Medicine
Protective enzyme has a downside: Asthma
The abnormal production of a parasite-fighting enzyme contributes to asthma.
By John Travis - Archaeology
Rat DNA points to Pacific migrations
An analysis of mitochondrial DNA from Pacific rats supports a theory that ancestors of today's Polynesians migrated from Southeast Asia to a string of South Pacific islands in at least two separate dispersals.
By Bruce Bower - Health & Medicine
Caloric threats from sugarfree drinks?
Regularly downing sweet drinks or sugar substitutes may foster overeating by reprogramming an individual's ability to judge a snack's caloric impact.
By Janet Raloff