Science News
Dementia’s ‘biological weak spot’: A single mutation helped this woman evade Alzheimer’s for decades
A cruel twist of genetic fate brought Alzheimer’s disease to a sprawling Colombian family. But thanks to a second twist, ...
Dangers of CAR-T treatments linked to ‘particularily messy’ method of killing tumors
Techniques to genetically modify patient immune cells have revolutionized the fight against hard-to-treat cancers. But they can come with dangerous ...
Why infected patients should be put on multidrug cocktails to head off antibiotic tolerance and resistance
Infectious bacteria that are down but not quite dead yet may be more dangerous than previously thought. Even as one ...
Does the pill cause depression? Why its too soon to be worried
“Does the pill cause depression?” the news headline asked. Prompted by a recent study that described a link between taking birth ...
Single dose of ketamine could weaken the desire to drink beer
A single dose of ketamine may cut down problematic drinking. Taken in the right context, the hallucinogenic drug may be able ...
Can we take AI to the next level by building robots that fear for their own safety?
There might be a way, though, to give robots feelings, say neuroscientists Kingson Man and Antonio Damasio. Simply build the ...
‘Self-eating’ mitochondria may make the brain vulnerable to Lou Gehrig’s disease
A newly discovered type of mitochondrial self-destruction may make some brain cells vulnerable to ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s ...
Tree planting can help slow global warming, but it’s no panacea, climate experts say
.... There’s room to plant enough trees, albeit many, many, many trees, to counter a big chunk of the planet-warming ...
‘Game changer’ for genetic privacy: Court forces GEDmatch to open its million-person genealogy database to police scrutiny
A Florida state judge has reportedly allowed police to search the entirety of the public genealogy website GEDmatch — home ...
Clues for predicting premature birth risk may be found in mother’s immune system, microbiome
For decades, researchers and clinicians have sought ways to predict and prevent preterm birth with little progress to show for ...
Measles wreaks havoc on body’s immune system, making it susceptible to other infections, study shows
Measles wages war on cells of the immune system. Now two tallies of the carnage, described in the Nov. 1 Science and Science ...
Potential problem with lab-grown mini-brains: They’re ‘stressed-out and confused’
Brain cells grown into clumps in flasks are totally stressed-out and confused. Cells in these clumps have ambiguous identities and ...
Breast cancer drug may offer a precision treatment for aggressive prostate cancer tumors
A drug used to treat breast and ovarian cancers tied to certain genetic mutations may help combat some of the ...
How can ‘water bears’ survive in outer space? ‘Fluffy cloud’ of protein may shield tardigrade DNA
Tardigrades may partly owe their ability to survive outer space to having the molecular equivalent of cotton candy. Water bears, ...
Aggression, trainability and other dog traits linked to genetics in study
Among 101 dog breeds, scientists found that certain behavioral traits such as trainability or aggression were more likely to be shared ...
Did whales gain the ability to live in the water by shedding genes?
Like stripping down to swim, the ancestors of whales and dolphins may have shed some genes during their transition from ...
Soot in the womb: Research suggests air pollution threatens developing babies
Breathing in polluted air may send soot far beyond a pregnant woman’s lungs, all the way to the womb surrounding ...
As the ocean heats up, coral reproduction is thrown out of step
Bad timing for coral sex might be an underappreciated threat of climate change. Spawning is out of sync for at ...
Increased dementia risk linked to high blood pressure during middle age
Controlling high blood pressure during middle age may help stave off dementia later in life. In a long-term study, researchers ...
Alzheimer’s disease and drowsiness: Link could help us determine where the disease first attacks the brain
Alzheimer’s disease destroys command centers in the brain that keep people awake. That finding could explain why the disease often ...
CRISPR ‘put to the test’ against inherited blindness, blood disease. Next up Duchenne muscular dystrophy, cystic fibrosis
Since its debut in 2012, CRISPR gene editing has held the promise of curing most of the over 6,000 known ...
What makes us human? These pieces of donated brain tissue may offer answers
Half an hour earlier, this piece of neural tissue was tucked inside a 41-year-old woman’s head, on her left side, ...
Sleep may have originated underwater 450 million years ago
No one should have to sleep with the fishes, but new research on zebrafish suggests that we sleep like them. ...
Gut microbes may offer performance boost for elite athletes
One difference between elite athletes and the rest of us might be in what hangs out in their guts. Microbes ...
Consumer genetic testing firms may not be able to block police access to data
The GEDMatch decision to give police access to its data in the assault case — made without informing the database’s ...
Were hominids making stone tools 2.6 million years ago? Controversy greets discovery
Discoveries in East Africa of what may be the oldest expertly sharpened stone implements suggest that early members of the ...
Does our gut bacteria alter the effectiveness of drug treatments?
Prescribing the best medication may require going with a patient’s gut — or at least, the bacteria that live there ...
‘Immune amnesia’: Why measles makes you more vulnerable to infections that cause pneumonia, ear infections, diarrhea
The most iconic thing about measles is the rash — red, livid splotches that make infection painfully visible. But that ...