Humans
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
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- Humans
From the January 20, 1934, issue
alt=”Click to view larger image”> GRAVE OF PREHISTORIC CHIEF’S DAUGHTER EXCAVATED A girl of 20, almost toothless! This is the pathetic picture of prehistoric Alaska revealed in the skeleton of an Eskimo chief’s daughter. The grave of the girl, discovered in southwestern Alaska by Dr. Frederica de Laguna of the University of Pennsylvania Museum, yielded […]
- Humans
Telegraph Days
Samuel F.B. Morse invented the electromagnetic telegraph and the Library of Congress holds an extensive collection of his papers. About 6,500 of these documents are now available online. They document Morse’s invention, his participation in the development of telegraph systems in the United States and abroad, his career as a painter, his family life, his […]
- Health & Medicine
Arsenic helps tumors, blood vessels grow
Rather than being a potential antitumor agent, arsenic may actually help a tumor's supporting network of blood vessels thrive.
- Health & Medicine
Conduit to the Brain: Particles enter the nervous system via the nose
Tiny airborne particles can apparently infiltrate the brain by shimmying up the nerve that governs smell.
- Health & Medicine
Cluster Buster: Might a simple sugar derail Huntington’s?
A study in mice with a disease resembling Huntington's shows that a simple sugar impedes the protein aggregation that kills brain cells.
- Health & Medicine
Viruses depend on shocking proteins
To replicate within a cell, a bird virus must force the cell to make certain proteins.
- Health & Medicine
Drugs slow aging in worms
Drugs that defuse so-called free radicals lengthen a worm's life span by more than 50 percent.
- Health & Medicine
Some psychoactive drugs ease harsh PMS
Drugs such as widely prescribed Prozac can relieve a severe form of premenstrual syndrome.
- Health & Medicine
Drug spares eggs from early death
A newly discovered drug that prevents radiation from hastening egg cell death in mice might also prevent some human cancer patients from suffering sterility and premature menopause.
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- Health & Medicine
Diabetes: Coffee and Caffeine Appear Protective
Most studies over the past decade have painted tea as a therapeutic beverage and coffee as its dastardly counterpart–a brew that challenges weak hearts and joints. However, such black-and-white characterizations appear to have overstated coffee’s dark side. New data now indicate that drinking java–lots of it, and especially the caffeinated form–can curb type II diabetes. […]
