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Jul 13, 2024 | 
sciencenews.org | Jonathan Lambert |Gloria Dickie |Sofie Bates
Science News has partnered with Trusting News to gather feedback on the potential use of AI in journalism. Currently, we do not publish any content produced by generative AI (see our policy). We do want to hear your views on how Science News could use AI responsibly. Let us know by participating in a short 10 question survey.
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Nov 17, 2023 | 
sciencenews.org | Aina Abell |Sofie Bates |Aimee Cunningham |Pratik Pawar
P.P.C. Graziadei and J.F. Metcalf of Florida State University have been producing … ever more detailed, evidence for olfactory nerve regeneration in mammals…. Might olfactory nerves be regenerated in people who have trouble smelling, thereby restoring or improving their sense of smell? “The phenomena of regeneration are applicable to all vertebrates and most likely to humans,” says Graziadei.
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Nov 17, 2023 | 
sciencenews.org | Saima S. Iqbal |Sofie Bates |Pratik Pawar
WASHINGTON — A genetic variant commonly found in some Africans may stymie the effects of a popular breast cancer drug. The variant produces a sluggish version of the enzyme known to activate tamoxifen. People who inherit two copies of the variant show five times less active drug in their bloodstreams compared with people who don’t have that variant, researchers reported November 2 at the American Society of Human Genetics’ annual meeting.
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Nov 14, 2023 | 
sciencenews.org | Tina Saey |Sofie Bates |Aimee Cunningham
WASHINGTON — Scientists have uncovered a clue about why it takes so long for Huntington’s disease to develop. And they may have a lead on how to stop the fatal brain disease. Huntington’s is caused by a mistakenly repeated bit of a gene called HTT. Until recently, researchers thought the number of repeats a person is born with doesn’t change, though repeats may expand when passed to future generations.
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Nov 8, 2023 | 
sciencenews.org | Jake Buehler |Freda Kreier |Sofie Bates
Lice have been bugging humans for as long as our species has been around, and the insects’ genes record the story of their hosts’ global voyages, a study finds. Lice DNA suggests that the scalp stowaways rode humans to the New World at least twice — once from Asia many millennia ago, and again much more recently via European colonists, researchers report November 8 in PLOS ONE. Head lice (Pediculus humanus capitis) can’t jump or fly.
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Oct 25, 2023 | 
sciencenews.org | Saima S. Iqbal |Sofie Bates |Sid Perkins
Many feathered dinosaurs couldn’t fly — at least, not like birds do today. But the reptiles’ feathers may have been more birdlike than scientists thought. In 2019, fossil analyses found that feathers from a flightless dinosaur mostly contained a different, more flexible form of the keratin protein that makes up modern bird beaks, scales and feathers.
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Oct 20, 2023 | 
sciencenews.org | Tina Saey |Saima S. Iqbal |Skyler Ware |Sofie Bates
Will Ungerer isn’t a typical fourth-grader. The 10-year-old from Midlothian, Va., plays tag with his friends and swims in the ocean. “I think his peers would describe him as someone who is kind, sweet and funny, and supersmart,” says his mother, Sheila Ungerer. He won a countywide citizenship award and was named classroom student of the year. But “he’s not a really fast runner,” his peers might say.
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Oct 13, 2023 | 
sciencenews.org | Meghan Rosen |Nicoletta Lanese |Sofie Bates
When breast cancer spreads, it often targets the spine. Now scientists may have finally discovered why. A newfound kind of stem cell drives cancer cells to bones in the vertebrae, pathologist Matthew Greenblatt of Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City and his colleagues report September 13 in Nature. The find helps explain a long-standing mystery of metastasis: why some cancers break away from their site of origin, journey through the bloodstream and take up residence in the backbone.
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Sep 14, 2023 | 
sciencenews.org | Meghan Rosen |Sofie Bates |Aimee Cunningham |Inés Gutiérrez Jaber
The woman’s mysterious symptoms started in her stomach. Weeks of abdominal pain and diarrhea led to night sweats and a dry cough. Then, doctors found lesions on her lungs, liver and spleen. An infection, perhaps. But tests for bacteria, fungi, a human parasite and even autoimmune disease all came up negative. Three weeks later, the woman was in the hospital with a fever and cough. CT scans revealed a clue that was telling, in retrospect: Some of her lung lesions appeared to be migrating.
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Aug 29, 2023 | 
sciencenews.org | Meghan Rosen |Sofie Bates |Freda Kreier
A diabetes-turned-weight-loss medication could be on the verge of scoring a hat trick: It may also be a cardiovascular wonder drug. But limited results from a new and closely watched clinical trial have raised a flurry of questions. Who benefited from the drug and how long did they need to be treated? What were the side effects? And are the newly reported cardiovascular effects driven by weight loss, or is the medication working in some other way?
