Medicine
Want to Be Healthy? Manage Your Microbes Like a Wildlife Park
Our bodies are slurries of living microbial organisms, without which we’d be rendered ill or worse. Science is only now on the cusp of unraveling the roles that only a handful of our 100 trillion microbes play to keep our bodily systems running smoothly. Carl Zimmer explains the emerging field of medical ecology in the [...]
June 20, 2012 |
By Rachel Nuwer
Glasses Let Doctors, Poker Players See Your Blood
More specifically, O2Amps, a new vision filtration system, could let me see your blood in vivid detail–right through your skin. And with that power, says vision researcher and glasses developer Mark Changizi, comes the ability to, “enhance one’s perception of the emotion, mood and health signals” of those around us. “That means people wearing shades don’t [...]
June 19, 2012 |
By Colin Schultz
What the Taliban and Jenny McCarthy Have in Common
Jenny McCarthy and Hafiz Gul Bahadur, a Taliban commander in Pakistan, have at least one thing in common: they are both paranoid about vaccination. Bahadur blocked a vaccination campaign, scheduled to start in a few days, that would have reached 161,000 children in North Waziristan. Unlike McCarthy, the Taliban commander is not worried that vaccinations [...]
June 18, 2012 |
By Sarah Laskow
Edible Dictionary: Lean Cuisine Syndrome
Where do Mayor Michael Bloomberg's statistics come from? People underestimate junk food and overestimate healthy food in dietary surveys
June 11, 2012 |
By Peter Smith
Big Things Ahead… But Keep Your Shirt On
Americans in the 1940s had wondrous expectations about the post-war world. Meet one author who advised them to curb their enthusiasm
May 25, 2012 |
By Matt Novak
Tripping Through the Cold War: Drug Warfare in the Retrofuture
Was LSD the Soviet Union's secret weapon?
May 18, 2012 |
By Matt Novak
Mythology and the Raw Milk Movement
What's behind recent claims about a milky unpasteurized panacea?
May 09, 2012 |
By Peter Smith
The Gruesome History of Eating Corpses as Medicine
The question was not “Should you eat human flesh?” says one historian, but, “What sort of flesh should you eat?”
May 07, 2012 |
By Maria Dolan
The Shangri-La of Health Food
The Hunza people supposedly lived to be 100 and had a practically illness-free existence. The American infatuation with their lifestyle ended in a particularly dramatic fashion
April 30, 2012 |
By Peter Smith
Telemedicine Predicted in 1925
With video screens and remote control arms, any doctor could make a virtual housecall
March 14, 2012 |
By Matt Novak
Jose Andres and Other Toques of the Town Honor Alice Waters
What do you cook for famed chef Alice Waters? Washington's culinary celebrities faced this challenge at the unveiling of her portrait at the Smithsonian
January 31, 2012 |
By Jeanne Maglaty
In The Future, All Women Will Be Amazons
A 1950 news report predicted that women in the year 2000 would be "more than six feet tall, wear a size 11 shoe, have shoulders like a wrestler and muscles like a truck driver."
January 20, 2012 |
By Matt Novak
A Closer Look at What You Eat
A photographer uses a scanning electron microscope to zoom in on everyday foods—and makes art
January 13, 2012 |
By Megan Gambino
Music Playlists to Soothe Your Mind
Neuropsychiatrist Galina Mindlin suggests that listening to particular songs on your mp3 player can make you a more productive person
January 2012 |
By Erica R. Hendry
The Future’s War on Cancer
Scientific progress during the 20th century prompted a number of predictions about an impending cure
December 29, 2011 |
By Matt Novak
Can a Picky Eater Change Her Ways?
Most expand their culinary horizons as they get older, but a few people hold fast to limited diets of safe, familiar things like chicken nuggets and macaroni and cheese
December 16, 2011 |
By Lisa Bramen
The Gestational Diabetes Diet: Taking Carbs from a Pregnant Lady
The last thing a pasta-loving pregnant lady with a sweet tooth wants to hear is that she should cut out carbs
December 14, 2011 |
By Lisa Bramen
Is Licorice Dangerous?
Overindulgence in black licorice, according to the FDA, can cause potassium levels to fall, potentially leading to arrhythmia, a rise in blood pressure or other problems
November 01, 2011 |
By Jesse Rhodes
Is it Safe to Eat Roadkill?
Enough with the jokes already. Some people are serious about looking to the roadside for an alternative to mass-market meats
October 18, 2011 |
By Jesse Rhodes
Five Nobel Laureates Who Made Food History
These five Nobelists have made food safer or more available, or increased our knowledge of it
October 07, 2011 |
By Lisa Bramen
