Humans
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Health & Medicine
Do Arctic diets protect prostates?
Marine diets appear to explain why the incidence of prostate cancer among Inuit men is lower than that of males anywhere else in the world.
- Anthropology
Erectus Ahoy
A researcher who explores the nautical abilities of Stone Age people by building rafts and having crews row them across stretches of ocean contends that language and other cognitive advances emerged 900,000 years ago with Homo erectus, not considerably later among modern humans, as is usually assumed.
- Humans
From the October 7, 1933, issue
ANCIENT MAP SHOWS HOW WORLD LOOKED TO COLUMBUS Startled to find the name Columbus mentioned on an old Turkish map of the Atlantic Ocean, Paul Kahle has subjected the map to closest study, finding on it important new clues to the discovery of America. In a report on his investigations, to appear in the forthcoming […]
- Humans
Nobel prizes go to scientists harnessing odd phenomena
The 2003 Nobel prizes in the sciences were announced early this week.
- Health & Medicine
Was President Taft cognitively impaired?
President William Howard Taft apparently had sleep apnea, a breathing disorder that could explain his propensity to nod off.
- Health & Medicine
Making the heart burn
Burning chest pain during a heart attack may stem from a protein that also responds to chili peppers.
- Health & Medicine
Coronary Fix: Coated inserts keep vessels unclogged
Mesh cylinders called stents, which doctors use to prop open coronary arteries, work better when they are coated with sirolimus, a drug that inhibits the accumulation of cells along the device.
- Health & Medicine
Timing That First Spoonful: Diabetes risk reflects when cereals enter infant diet
The timing of cereals' introduction into children's diets may affect their risk of developing type 1 diabetes, two studies suggest.
- Anthropology
Y Trail of the First Americans: DNA data point to late New World entry
Scientists identified a gene variant on the Y chromosome that allowed them to estimate that people first reached the Americas no earlier than about 18,000 years ago.
- Health & Medicine
One bug’s bane may be another’s break
People who carry pneumococcus bacteria in their nasal passages may be partially protected against having their noses colonized by Staphylococcus aureus.
- Health & Medicine
Drug combination unexpectedly flops
A combination of therapies that researchers anticipated would work well against HIV failed to stop the virus from replicating in more than half the volunteers who received it.
- Health & Medicine
Resistant staph spreads in communities
Antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus aureus—once a problem limited mainly to health care settings—has become a menace in communities around the world.
