Humans
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Health & Medicine
Acrylamide—From Spuds to Gingerbread
Just in time for the holiday season, the Bavarian Ministry of Health reports finding extremely high concentrations of acrylamide—a chemical that causes cancer in rats—in gingerbread. German chemists turned up acrylamide in a favorite holiday treat: gingerbread. Whether baked at home or fried at a restaurant, all hot-potato products cooked up substantial quantitites of acrylamide. […]
- Health & Medicine
Male Pill on the Horizon: Drug disables mouse sperm but wears off quickly
A new oral drug created to ease a genetic disorder could have contraceptive benefits.
- Health & Medicine
First-Line Treatment: Chronic-leukemia drug clears a big hurdle
In its first large-scale test on newly diagnosed leukemia patients, the drug imatinib—also called Gleevec and STI-571—stopped or reversed the disease in nearly all patients receiving it.
- Health & Medicine
Visionary science for the intestine
A tiny disposable flash camera that a person swallows can detect problems in the small intestine.
- Health & Medicine
Bone scan reveals estrogen effects
Using a scanning technology called microcomputerized tomography, scientists have a new way to look at the difference between bone exposed to estrogen and bone deprived of it.
- Humans
From the June 14, 1930, issue
1,500,000,000 YEARS OF LIFE PORTRAYED IN GREAT HALL OF PAINTINGS Fifteen hundred million years of life on this planet will be unrolled as a single connected epic in a series of three majestic new halls planned for the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. Fossils, rocks, mounted plant and animal specimens, paintings, and statuary […]
- Health & Medicine
Imaging Parkinson’s
A new brain-imaging technique can supply proof of Parkinson's disease in people whose symptoms fall short of the standard definition of the disease.
- Health & Medicine
Zapping bone brings relief from tumor pain
By unleashing radio waves inside bone, researchers have stopped intractable pain in people with cancer that has spread to their skeletons.
- Health & Medicine
Bilirubin: Both villain and hero?
Bilirubin, which causes jaundice in newborns, may protect against cellular damage.
- Health & Medicine
In Silico Medicine
Medical researchers are increasingly turning to computer simulations to help them understand the complexity of living systems, design better drugs, and treat patients more effectively.
- Humans
From the December 10, 1932, issue
CALVES RETAIN PART OF WILD THINGS’ CHARM Cows are prosaic. Like all the rest of us who have grown into maturity and (alas!) responsibility, they have their workaday jobs in a workaday world, seeing to it that we get butter and, eventually, beefsteaks. But calves still have something reminiscent of the long-lost wild freedom of […]
- Health & Medicine
Home Cooking on the Wane
Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Passover are among the few holidays on which home-cooked meals remain the norm. On most other days of the year, a large and growing share of U.S. diners happily leave the cooking of at least one meal to professionals. Eating in. Eating out. Home cooking used to signify meals with a healthy […]
