Humans
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Anthropology
Dairying Pioneers: Milk ran deep in prehistoric England
Chemical analyses of prehistoric pot fragments indicate that English farmers milked livestock beginning around 6,000 years ago, providing the earliest confirmed evidence of dairying anywhere in the world.
- Health & Medicine
Dietary Inflation
“Finish what’s on your plate!” Thus has a multitude of well-intentioned moms exhorted millions of children, in an attempt to ensure good nutrition. Unfortunately, dieticians now find, too many grownups still feel compelled to empty their plates–even when those plates contain substantially more calories than our bodies need. Add to that the fact that modern […]
- Humans
From the July 5, 1930, issue
POWER PLANT SENTINELS When hundreds of thousands of horsepower traveling with the speed of lightning are instantly halted, you may be sure there will be a grand disturbance. And there is, but all the fuss is confined in steel tanks 25 feet tall and 10 feet wide, filled with oil. Two such tanks are shown […]
- Humans
From the January 28, 1933, issue
COMET PRINTS The dark, oblong areas pictured on the front cover are all that remain of a pre–Ice Age collision of cosmical magnitude, the smattering of a part of what is now the southeastern United States with fragments of a comet. This is the belief of Profs. F.A. Melton and William Schriever of the University […]
- Health & Medicine
As population ages, flu takes deadly turn
The annual U.S. toll of influenza has risen dramatically since the late 1970s, in part because of the advancing age of the population.
- Health & Medicine
Clot promoter cuts surgical bleeding
A clot-promoting protein known as recombinant activated factor VII might offer a new way to staunch demand for blood transfusions.
- Health & Medicine
Curbing Cancer? Low-Fat Diet During Adolescence Cuts Hormones, Possibly Breast Cancer Risk
Cutting back on cheeseburgers and French fries could spare girls more than extra pounds. A low-fat diet also reduces young girls’ sex hormone concentrations, a new study finds. What’s more, researchers say, the adolescent drop in hormones that are known to spur breast cancer in adults might stave off the disease later in life. More […]
- Health & Medicine
Too Much of a Good Thing: Excess vitamin A may hike bone-fracture rate
Dietary studies suggest that people who consume large amounts of vitamin A in foods or multivitamins are more likely to suffer hip fractures than are people who ingest modest amounts.
- Health & Medicine
Getting the Bugs Out of Blood
Researchers are developing methods for inactivating all sorts of pathogens that could be found in blood, including West Nile virus, an emerging infection recently brought to the United States from Africa.
- Humans
From the January 21, 1933, issue
SEVEN SLEEPERS CATACOMBS EXPLORED BY ARCHAEOLOGISTS One of the most venerable of Christian legends, running back through the middle ages into late antiquity, is that of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus: seven youths who hid themselves from the persecution of a pagan Roman emperor and awoke 200 years later to find the empire Christian. Then, […]
- Health & Medicine
C-Minus—The Fallout of Parents’ Smoking
Children who live with smokers may need more oranges and other rich sources of vitamin C, a new study concludes. It finds that exposure to even a little secondhand smoke significantly depresses concentrations of this important vitamin. Oranges are usually the first food that most people think of when asked to name sources of vitamin […]
- Health & Medicine
Blood-Clot Surprise: Finding might explain a danger of Viagra
An amendment to the blood-clotting pathway might link Viagra to heart attacks in some users.
