Humans
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Health & Medicine
Antibiotics diminish babies’ immune response to key vaccines
With each round of antibiotics during a child’s first two years, antibody levels to four vaccines dropped further from what’s considered protective.
- Particle Physics
Muons spill secrets about Earth’s hidden structures
Tracking travel patterns of subatomic particles called muons helps reveal the inner worlds of pyramids, volcanoes and more.
- Health & Medicine
What experts told me to do after my positive COVID-19 at-home test
Rapid at-home tests mean many COVID-19 cases go unreported, but they’re a great tool for deciding when to leave isolation. I found that out firsthand.
- Health & Medicine
Why taking medications during pregnancy is so confusing
It's hard to know what new drugs are safe when medical research excludes pregnant people.
- Particle Physics
A new nuclear imaging prototype detects tumors’ faint glow
Nuclear imaging that relies on Cerenkov light could supplement standard-of-care technology for identifying location of tumors.
- Archaeology
This hieroglyph is the oldest known record of the Maya calendar
Plaster fragments with the markings date to at least 200 B.C. and indicate that the calendar system, still used today, might be centuries older.
- Anthropology
How ancient, recurring climate changes may have shaped human evolution
Climate changes drove where Homo species lived over the last 2 million years, with a disputed ancestor giving rise to H. sapiens, a new study claims.
- Health & Medicine
What we learned about COVID-19 safety from a NYC anime convention
November’s Anime NYC convention was not a COVID-19 superspreader event, which means there are lessons to be learned.
- Health & Medicine
Racial bias can seep into U.S. patients’ medical notes
Black patients were more often described negatively in medical notes than white patients, which may impact care.
- Health & Medicine
We can do better than what was ‘normal’ before the pandemic
With all that people have endured, it would be a missed opportunity to toss aside what we’ve learned from the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Humans
Where you grew up may shape your navigational skills
People raised in cities with simple, gridlike layouts were worse at navigating in a video game designed for studying the brain.
- Genetics
We finally have a fully complete human genome
Finding the missing 8 percent of the human genome gives researchers a more powerful tool to better understand human health, disease and evolution.
