A recent study using specimens from Chicago’s Field Museum establishes that Nazca trophy heads came from people who lived in the same place and were part of the same culture as those who collected them.
Continue reading about Mystery Of South American Trophy Heads Solved
Adults with diabetes experience a slowdown in several types of mental processing, which appears early in the disease and persists into old age, according to new research. Given the sharp rise in new cases of diabetes, this finding means that more adults may soon be living with mild but lasting deficits in their thought processes.
Genes talk to themselves and to each other to control how a given cell manufactures proteins. But variation in the control of the same gene in two different tissues may contribute to certain human traits, including the likelihood of getting a disease, said a team of geneticists and neuroscientists.
Continue reading about Gene Expression And Splicing Vary Widely From One Tissue To The Next
Remember the cool girls, huddled together in high school restrooms, puffing their cigarettes? Well, here’s consolation for the nerds in the crowd: Those teen smokers are more likely to experience obesity as adults, according to a new study from Finland.
Continue reading about Teens Girls Smoke Now, Pay Later With Larger Waistlines As Adults
The center of the Milky Way presents astronomers with a paradox: It holds young stars, but no one is sure how those stars got there. The galactic center is wracked with powerful gravitational tides stirred by a 4 million solar-mass black hole. Those tides should rip apart molecular clouds that act as stellar nurseries, preventing [...]
Continue reading about Stars Forming Just Beyond Black Hole’s Grasp At Galactic Center
A new epidemiological study has found that among women who have never used menopausal hormone therapy, obese women are at an increased risk of developing ovarian cancer compared with women of normal weight.
Continue reading about Obesity Linked To Elevated Risk Of Ovarian Cancer
Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon forests has flipped from a decreasing to an increasing trend, according to new annual figures recently released by the country’s space agency INPE.
Continue reading about Amazon Deforestation Trend On The Increase
Adults with asthma are at increased risk of serious pneumococcal disease caused by Streptococcus pneumonia, the most common bacteria causing middle ear infections and community acquired pneumonia.
Continue reading about Increased Risk Of Pneumococcal Disease In Asthma Patients
Physicists have developed a promising new way to identify a possible abnormality in a fundamental building block of Einstein’s theory of relativity known as “Lorentz invariance.” If confirmed, the abnormality would disprove the basic tenet that the laws of physics remain the same for any two objects traveling at a constant speed or rotated relative [...]
Retroviruses are the worst sort of guest. Over eons, these molecular parasites have insinuated themselves into their hosts’ DNA and caused a ruckus. The poor hosts can’t even be rid of the intruders by killing them, because they stubbornly remain after death.
Continue reading about Defensive Protein Killed Ancient Primate Retroviruses, Research Suggests