Humans
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We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
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HumansSmall Steps: World Summit delegates wrangle over eco-friendly future
Twenty thousand delegates from around the world met in Johannesburg last week for a contentious World Summit on Sustainable Development.
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HumansFrom the September 10, 1932, issue
COVER PICTURE PURSUED OVER NEW ENGLAND HILLS By chasing a blue hole in the screen of cloud that covered part of New England, a party of eclipse observers that included Prof. John Q. Stewart, Princeton astronomer, successfully saw the corona in clear sky and obtained the News Letter‘s cover picture. Originally they planned to view […]
By Science News -
Health & MedicineTargeted Therapies
Tailoring prescriptions based on a person's genes may help reduce side effects and allow the development of more personalized medicine.
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ArchaeologyCould the Anasazi have stayed?
New computer simulations of the changing environmental conditions around one of the Anasazi cultural centers in the first part of the last millennium suggest that drought wasn't the only factor behind a sudden collapse of the civilization.
By Sid Perkins -
Health & MedicineProtein flags colon, prostate cancers
A compound first identified as a possible culprit in Huntington's disease may be an indicator of cancers of the prostate gland and colon.
By Nathan Seppa -
Health & MedicineAntibodies fight Ebola virus in mouse test
Specially designed antibodies can thwart Ebola virus in mice by binding to a glycoprotein on the surface of virus-infected cells, suggesting a potential treatment for the lethal disease.
By Nathan Seppa -
Health & MedicineFused cells hold promise of cancer vaccines
A vaccine composed of tumor cells fused to immune cells has helped several people survive advanced kidney cancer.
By John Travis -
ArchaeologyAncient Asian Tools Crossed the Line
Excavations in China yield surprising finds of 800,000-year-old stone hand axes.
By Bruce Bower -
Health & MedicineArctic Sneeze: Greenlanders’ allergies are increasing
Allergies in Greenland nearly doubled from 1987 to 1998.
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AnthropologyLost-and-Found Fossil Tot: Neandertal baby rises from French archive
The approximately 40,000-year-old skeleton of a Neandertal baby, filed and forgotten in a French museum for nearly 90 years, has been recovered by an anthropologist.
By Bruce Bower -
HumansFrom the September 3, 1932, issue
INSECT LARVAE MAKE MOSAIC JEWELRY Manufacturers of modern jewelry might well turn to the larvae of the caddis fly for effective models for small containers–tiny perfume bottles, say, or lipstick cases. These water-dwelling “worms” build mosaic coverings for the little cylindrical houses they spin for themselves, taking bits of sand and gravel from the streambed […]
By Science News -
Health & MedicineStroke Stopper: New vaccine curbs blood vessel damage in lab animals
A vaccine that desensitizes the immune system to a protein inside blood vessels prevents some strokes in laboratory rats.
By Nathan Seppa