Articles written by Malcolm Ritter
Sorted by date Results 1 - 25 of 71
By 
Tiny airborne particles may pose a big coronavirus problem
NEW YORK (AP) — At a University of Maryland lab, people infected with the new coronavirus take turns sitting in a chair and putting their faces into the big end of a large cone. They recite the alphabet and sing or just sit quietly for a half h...
Profile of a killer: Unraveling the deadly new coronavirus
NEW YORK (AP) — What is this enemy? Seven months after the first patients were hospitalized in China battling an infection doctors had never seen before, the world has reached an unsettling crossroads. Countless hours of treatment and research, t...
Science Says: How risky is that virus? Your mind may mislead
NEW YORK (AP) — Anna Alexander, a property manager in Virginia Beach, Virginia, started the day Monday thinking that she might avoid shaking hands because of the coronavirus outbreak. Then somebody stuck out a hand to shake. She took it. "I'm a b...
Epilepsy treatment side effect: New insights about the brain
SEATTLE (AP) — Though Genette Hofmann is still using her brain, last month she donated a bit of it — to science. Hofmann needed the surgery — her Seattle surgeon was looking deep into her brain, where he found the trigger for the epileptic seizu...
FDA approves first treatment for kids with peanut allergy
WASHINGTON (AP) — The first treatment for peanut allergies is about to hit the market, a big step toward better care for all kinds of food allergies -- but still a long way from a cure. Friday's approval by the Food and Drug Administration p...
Scientists retract study suggesting mutation shortens life
NEW YORK (AP) — Scientists have retracted a study that appeared to show people may live shortened lives if they carry a DNA mutation that reduces their chance of HIV infection. The study focused on people who carry a specific mutation in both c...
3 win Nobel Prize for showing how cells sense low oxygen
NEW YORK (AP) — Two Americans and a British scientist won a Nobel Prize on Monday for discovering details of how the body's cells sense and react to low oxygen levels, providing a foothold for developing new treatments for anemia, cancer and other d...
5 scientists honored for cancer therapy, immune system work
NEW YORK (AP) — Five scientists have won prestigious medical awards for creating an innovative breast cancer treatment and discovering key players of the disease-fighting immune system. They will share two $250,000 awards from the Lasker F...
DNA hints the Loch Ness 'monster' might be giant eel
NEW YORK (AP) — A scientist who collected DNA from Scotland's Loch Ness suggests the lake's fabled monster might be a giant eel. Neil Gemmell from the University of Otago in New Zealand says the project found a surprisingly high amount of eel DNA i...
Science Says: Airplane turbulence can strike out of the blue
NEW YORK (AP) — They literally don't see it coming. "Clear-air turbulence," which evidently jolted an Air Canada flight Thursday over the Pacific Ocean, strikes almost literally out of the blue, with no visible warning in the sky ahead. An a...
Greek find called earliest sign of our species out of Africa
NEW YORK (AP) — Scientists say they've identified the earliest sign of our species outside Africa, a chunk of skull recovered from a cave in southern Greece. Its estimated age is at least 210,000 years old, making it 16,000 or more years older t...
Scientists feel chill of crackdown on fetal tissue research
WASHINGTON (AP) — To save babies from brain-damaging birth defects, University of Pittsburgh scientist Carolyn Coyne studies placentas from fetuses that otherwise would be discarded — and she's worried this kind of research is headed for the chopping...
Chinese fossil sheds light on mysterious Neanderthal kin
NEW YORK (AP) — Nearly 40 years after it was found by a monk in a Chinese cave, a fossilized chunk of jawbone has been revealed as coming from a mysterious relative of the Neanderthals. Until now, the only known remains of these Denisovans were a f...
Scientists spur some activity in brains of slaughtered pigs
NEW YORK (AP) — Scientists restored some activity within the brains of pigs that had been slaughtered hours before, raising hopes for some medical advances and questions about the definition of death. The brains could not think or sense anything, r...
Bones from Philippine cave reveal a new human cousin
NEW YORK (AP) — Fossil bones and teeth found in the Philippines have revealed a long-lost cousin of modern people, which evidently lived around the time our own species was spreading from Africa to occupy the rest of the world. It's yet another r...
Science Says: Why scientists prize plant, animal genomes
NEW YORK (AP) — Just about every week, it seems, scientists publish the unique DNA code of some creature or plant. Just in February, they published the genome for the strawberry, the paper mulberry tree, the great white shark and the Antarctic b...
NASA's plan to scoop up dirt from asteroid hits a snag
NEW YORK (AP) — NASA's plan to scoop up dirt and gravel from an asteroid has hit a snag, but scientists say they can overcome it. The asteroid Bennu was thought to have wide, open areas suitable for the task. But a recently arrived spacecraft r...
Scientists back temporary global ban on gene-edited babies
NEW YORK (AP) — An international group of scientists and ethicists on Wednesday called for a temporary global ban on making babies with edited genes. It's the latest reaction to last November's announcement that gene-edited twins had been born in C...
Lab revokes honors for controversial DNA scientist Watson
NEW YORK (AP) — James Watson, the Nobel Prize-winning DNA scientist who lost his job in 2007 for expressing racist views, was stripped of several honorary titles Friday by the New York lab he once headed. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory said it was r...
Skulls reveal Neanderthals, humans had similarly harsh lives
NEW YORK (AP) — Life as a Neanderthal was no picnic, but a new analysis says it was no more dangerous than what our own species faced in ancient times. That challenges what the authors call the prevailing view of our evolutionary cousins, that t...
Study: DNA websites cast broad net for identifying people
NEW YORK (AP) — About 60 percent of the U.S. population with European heritage may be identifiable from their DNA by searching consumer websites, even if they've never made their own genetic information available, a study estimates. And that n...
Genetic glitch increases men's risk of impotence, study says
NEW YORK (AP) — Scientists say they've located the first well-documented genetic glitch that increases a man's risk of impotence, a step that might someday lead to new treatments. Most impotence isn't caused by genetics but rather things like o...
Chemistry Nobel for using evolution to create new proteins
STOCKHOLM (AP) — Three scientists won the Nobel Prize in chemistry Wednesday for using a sped-up version of evolution to create new proteins that have led to a best-selling drug and other products. The Royal Swedish Academy of Science said their w...
Science fiction into reality: Nobel Prize honors laser work
NEW YORK (AP) — Scientists from the United States, Canada and France won the Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday for revolutionizing the use of lasers in research, finding ways to make them deliver more powerful flashes of light and even to act like t...
Memory's frailty may be playing role in Kavanaugh matter
NEW YORK (AP) — She says he sexually assaulted her; he denies it. Is somebody deliberately lying? Not necessarily. Experts say that because of how memory works, it's possible that both Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey F...
