Humans

  1. Health & Medicine

    With this bait, TB won’t play possum

    An oral tuberculosis vaccine, designed to help curtail the spread of the disease in wildlife populations, may also find use in people.

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  2. Health & Medicine

    No benefit from screening

    Two large studies confirm that a urine test for a common childhood cancer—neuroblastoma—offers no benefit.

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  3. Health & Medicine

    Cancer Link Cooks Up Doubt: Heating may form potential carcinogen in food

    Foods cooked at high temperatures contain large concentrations of acrylamide, a compound suspected to cause cancer in people, but researchers are cautious about acting on preliminary, unpublished data.

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  4. Humans

    In USSR, generals did it by the numbers

    A statistical analysis of the dates and times of Soviet underground nuclear tests suggests that the favorite numbers of the test-site commander may have had a significant influence upon the precise timing of the detonations.

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  5. Health & Medicine

    Virus gives cancer the cold treatment

    A genetically engineered version of a common cold virus appears to kill cancer cells without harming healthy tissue.

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  6. Anthropology

    Attack of the Ancestor: Neandertals took a stab at violent assaults

    The pieced-together fragments of a 36,000-year-old Neandertal skull reveal a bony scar caused by a blow from a sharp tool or weapon.

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  7. Health & Medicine

    Deadly Pickup: Enzyme permits plague germ to ride in fleas

    Acquisition of a gene that enables the plague bacterium to live inside blood-sucking fleas may have set the stage for the Black Death.

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  8. Health & Medicine

    Risk Factor: Genetic defect hikes breast cancer threat

    A mutation already linked to several types of cancer doubles the risk of breast cancer in a woman and multiplies men's slight risk of the disease even more dramatically.

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  9. Health & Medicine

    Put Out to Pasture: Strategy to prolong antibiotics’ potency

    The use of antibiotics to promote growth in farm animals hastens the end of their medical effectiveness.

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  10. Health & Medicine

    Shocking findings

    Implanted defibrillators reduce the occurrence of sudden death by about a third among people who had previous heart attacks and continue to suffer impaired heart function.

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  11. Health & Medicine

    Mammograms on Trial

    New controversy about old data has physicians, women, and policy analysts struggling to decide whether all women should be screened with mammography in order to reduce deaths due to breast cancer.

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  12. Health & Medicine

    Honey of a Threat

    An all-natural, organic food, honey has a benign–if not wholesome–image. Many people consider it a superior alternative to table sugar and corn syrup–two primary sweeteners in the U.S diet. Though attractive to bees, borage may lace its flowers nectar with toxic chemicals that could then show up in honey. James N. Roitman, USDA-ARS Comfrey, formerly […]

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