Brief Points, December 2005

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Screening for C-reactive protein as a cardiovascular risk factor may not help, because the protein typically occurs with traditional risk factors, such as smoking, high blood pressure and obesity. Archives of Internal Medicine, October 10
Losing consciousness on falling asleep results not because parts of the brain are shutting down but because the connections among different areas cease. Science, September 30
The Hall effect, the sideways deflection of electrons by a magnetic field, can also occur in phonons—or vibrations in a crystal lattice—even though phonons are not charged. The deflection showed up as a slight temperature variation across a sample. Physical Review Letters, October 4
A gene calledvSEPS1vunderlies inflammation. Ordinarily, the gene helps to clear out a cell's faulty proteins, but individuals who had an impairedvSEPS1vvariant suffered from higher levels of inflammation. Nature Genetics online, October 9

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