Medicine
Teens Predict Their Own Downward Spirals
For teens, having low expectations about living long, healthy lives turns out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
August 02, 2012 |
By Rachel Nuwer
For Soldiers, Sperm Banking Could Be the New Flack Jacket
Soldiers arriving home with missing or mutilated genitals have drown attention to the lack of government support for in vitro fertilization or artificial insemination using donated sperm, which costs up to $7,000 per procedure.
July 31, 2012 |
By Rachel Nuwer
Why You Shouldn’t Panic Over The Latest News About Bird Flu
New research reveals that the flu virus has mutated into a novel strain of influenza, which gained the ability to transfer not just from bird to seal, but from seal to seal.
July 31, 2012 |
By Rachel Nuwer
Women’s Brains Age Faster than Men’s, Thanks to Stress
New research shows that despite the fact that women live longer on average than men, their brains age faster. Scientists are pointing to stress as the possible culprit.
July 26, 2012 |
By Rachel Nuwer
Superheroes’ Most Amazing Power: Getting Kids to Choose Healthy Snacks Over French Fries
Cornell researchers exploit kids' adoration of Batman for the better, using the superhero as an impetus to encourage kids to eat healthy.
July 20, 2012 |
By Rachel Nuwer
Energy Drinks: Wassup With Supplements?
The effects of energy drink supplements like taurine, guarana and ginseng have been studied prolifically, and some of their benefits are rather surprising
July 19, 2012 |
By Kat J. McAlpine
How Common Was Cannibalism?
While eating one another is understandable if stranded on a snowy mountain or desolate wasteland, evidence exists that some societies tucked into the practice even if not faced with life-or-death situations, just for the fun of it.
July 18, 2012 |
By Rachel Nuwer
Sugar Placebo Pills Can Make You Feel Worse
Lurking in the shadows around any discussion of the placebo effect is its nefarious and lesser-known twin, the nocebo effect.
July 16, 2012 |
By Colin Schultz
Fetal Genome Sequenced Without Help From Daddy
Researchers now need only a blood sample from a pregnant mother to construct a fetus' entire genome.
July 16, 2012 |
By Rachel Nuwer
Blame Your Chicken Dinner for That Persistant Urinary Tract Infection
E. coli, the most common cause of urinary tract infections, has been growing resistant to antibiotics, and chickens may be to blame.
July 12, 2012 |
By Colin Schultz
For Coal Miners, Back to Black Lungs
Though Congress promised back in 1969 that mines would clean up their act, the miner's bane seems to be back in Appalachia's coal mines. Black lung has returned to the scene.
July 11, 2012 |
By Rachel Nuwer
Sitting Just Three Hours a Day Can Take Two Years Off Your Life
Sitting down for more than three hours a day can shave a person's life expectancy by two years, even if he or she is physically active and refrains from dangerous habits like smoking.
July 11, 2012 |
By Colin Schultz
New Gene Provides Link Between Stress and Depression
It’s not news that stress and depression are linked. It is news, however, that the gene neuritin plays a part in the toxic stress-depression relationship. Scientific American’s Scicurious blogs on a new PNAS study: All of the clinical antidepressants that are currently on the market work through one specific mechanism: they increase the levels of certain [...]
July 08, 2012 |
By Rachel Nuwer
How Our Food System Could Be Radically Better in 2032
Fast forward 20 years. How will we get our food? What delicacies will stock our fridges and appear on restaurant menus? Will our diets be significantly different, or will we have simply found new things to stuff in yet-undiscovered pockets of our pizzas? Andrew Purvis of Green Futures Magazine ponders the question, with an optimistic slant: [...]
July 07, 2012 |
By Rachel Nuwer
U.S. & Europe are Hotspots for Deadly Emerging Diseases
“A hot virus from the rainforest lives within a 24 hour plane flight from every city on earth,” Richard Preston wrote in The Hot Zone. It turns out, however, that the places most likely to usher in the next deadly outbreak are in fact the cities of the United States and Western Europe. At least [...]
July 05, 2012 |
By Rachel Nuwer
Are Millennials Too Strung Out on Antidepressants to Even Know Who They Are?
The Prozac Nation-raised youth of the 1990s has grown up, and today’s teens are even more heavily medicated than their predecessors two decades before. But what is the emotional price of taking antidepressants or attention-deficit hyperactivity medications for years on end – especially during a person’s most formative stages of adolescence? In an essay based [...]
July 05, 2012 |
By Rachel Nuwer
Vintage Summer Tips From the U.S. Government: “Overeating Is Overheating”
In the early 1940s, in the years after the country had entered World War II, the American government had a particular interest in keeping workers on the job.
July 03, 2012 |
By Sarah Laskow
Science Answers Age-Old Question, Should We Live to Work or Work to Live?
It’s summer time, and the temptation to skip the office and head to the pool is intoxicating. If only each and every day could be spent lazing under an umbrella rather than toiling away in pursuit of the next paycheck. But according to NatCen Social Research, a British independent social resaerch center, it’s precisely the [...]
July 03, 2012 |
By Rachel Nuwer
Easter Island Drug Makes Mice Happier, Smarter
Out of Polynesia emerges a drug that may have potential for preventing cognitive decline associated with old age. ScienceDaily describes a study just published in the journal Neuroscience: Rapamycin, a bacterial product first isolated from soil on Easter Island, enhanced learning and memory in young mice and improved these faculties in old mice, the study [...]
July 03, 2012 |
By Rachel Nuwer
The Top Athletes Looking for an Edge and the Scientists Trying to Stop Them
Behind the scenes there will be a high-tech, high-stakes competition between Olympic athletes who use banned substances and drug testers out to catch them
July 2012 |
By Christie Aschwanden
