Humans
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Health & Medicine
Boning Up
Biologists have discovered a mechanism for communication between two types of bone cell, and they're exploring the possible bone-growth-stimulating effect of popular cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins.
- Health & Medicine
Hemispheric Cross Talk: Brains show two sides of language function
Some people coordinate language use with both sides of their brains, allowing them to retain verbal skills after damage to one side or the other.
- Health & Medicine
Smart Drugs: Leukemia treatments nearing prime time
Three new drugs stop acute myeloid leukemia in mice, suggesting the treatments will work in people with this deadly blood cancer.
- Humans
Small lab animals exempted from law
The new farm bill explicitly exempts rats, mice, and birds from coverage under the federal Animal Welfare Act.
- Health & Medicine
Chemical stops allergic reaction in tests
Researchers have developed a protein that short-circuits allergic reactions in mice and in tissue cultures of human cells.
- Health & Medicine
Shuttling medicines via blood cells
Researchers have developed a way of encapsulating drugs in red blood cells, which can be used to deliver low doses of anti-inflammatory drugs to cystic fibrosis patients.
- Health & Medicine
Standing Up to Gravity
Studies in space can help physicians better understand a disorder in which patients get faint or dizzy while standing.
- Health & Medicine
Nerve cells of ALS patients harbor virus
Fragments of viral genetic material show up with unusually high frequency in nerve tissue of patients with ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease, suggesting a link between the virus and this lethal illness.
- Humans
Solar series wins award for Science News
The Solar Physics Division of the American Astronomical Society has given its 2002 popular writing award to Ron Cowen and Sid Perkins for a two-part series on cyclic variations in the sun's activity.
- Health & Medicine
Efficient Germ: Human body boosts power of cholera microbe
Some genes in the cholera-causing bacterium Vibrio cholerae are activated and others are silenced when the microbe passes through the human gut, changes that make the bacterium more virulent.
- Health & Medicine
Transplant Triumph: Cloned cow kidneys thrive for months
Cow kidneys and other tissue made by cloning ward off immune rejection after transplantation into cows.
- Health & Medicine
Dieting woes tied to hunger hormone
A rise in the appetite-enhancing hormone ghrelin after weight loss may explain why dieters regain pounds.
