After receiving an experimental treatment to stop the body from attacking itself, five people no longer have any symptoms of lupus. That treatment, called CAR-T cell therapy, seems to have…
Category: Humans
Poliovirus is spreading in New York. Here’s what you need to know
A particular kind of poliovirus is spreading in the United States. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has confirmed that the country now joins a list of around…
Humans may have started tending animals almost 13,000 years ago
Hunter-gatherer groups living in southwest Asia may have started keeping and caring for animals nearly 13,000 years ago — roughly 2,000 years earlier than previously thought. Ancient plant samples extracted…
How living in a pandemic distorts our sense of time
Time hasn’t made much sense since spring 2020 for many people, myself included. In February 2020, during the Before Times, my family traveled to Barcelona, a relatively carefree trip that…
Can’t comb your kid’s hair? This gene may be to blame
The flurry of frizzy-hair e-mails began in 2016. Human geneticist Regina Betz of University Hospital Bonn in Germany and her team had just linked three genes to a rare disorder…
How the COVID-19 pandemic may leave a long-term imprint on our health
At the start of another school year, I’ve been thinking about the differences between 2021 and 2022. Last year, many schools had mask mandates, testing programs and quarantine rules (SN:…
How mythology could help demystify dog domestication
In Tom Edison’s Shaggy Dog, a short story by Kurt Vonnegut, Thomas Edison discovers that dogs are intellectually superior beings. They’re so smart, in fact, that the canines found the…
The oldest known surgical amputation occurred 31,000 years ago
A child who lived on the Indonesian island of Borneo around 31,000 years ago underwent the oldest known surgical operation, an amputation of the lower left leg, researchers say. One…
How mythology could help demystify dog domestication
In Tom Edison’s Shaggy Dog, a short story by Kurt Vonnegut, Thomas Edison discovers that dogs are intellectually superior beings. They’re so smart, in fact, that the canines found the…
Indigenous Americans ruled democratically long before the U.S. did
On sunny summer days, powerboats pulling water-skiers zip across Georgia’s Lake Oconee, a reservoir located about an hour-and-a-half drive east of Atlanta. For those without a need for speed, fishing…
