Medicine
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 Future of Cheating in Sports
As technology advances, so will access to ingenious—and troubling—new techniques
July 2012 |
By Christie Aschwanden
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
Hemingway’s Old Man Inspires Shark Oil for HIV Vaccine
Two pharma giants are teaming up to test the latest HIV vaccine, taking a hint from Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, reports Bloomberg. People on the coasts of Norway and Sweden have used shark liver oil for centuries to help heal wounds and treat respiratory and digestive illnesses, according to the American Cancer Society. In Hemingway’s book, which [...]
June 29, 2012 |
By Rachel Nuwer
Mom Keeps Kid Out of Cookie Jar, Forever
Should you raise a sugar-free baby? One mother makes a case for this radical move.
June 28, 2012 |
By Rachel Nuwer
Microparticle Elixir Can Keep Patients Alive for 30 Minutes Without Breathing
When people stop breathing, they die. Quickly. But a team at Boston Children’s Hospital has developed an elixir, filled with microparticles that carry oxygen to a person’s cells, that could keep a person alive for up to half an hour, even if they’re not breathing. Popular Science reports: The microparticle solution is different than blood [...]
June 28, 2012 |
By Sarah Laskow
A Little Perspective: Congress First Mandated Health Care in 1798
The Supreme Court handed down its decision on the Affordable Care Act this morning, and the individual mandate -- the requirement that all Americans buy health insurance, which was one of the bill's most at-risk provisions -- survived.
June 28, 2012 |
By Sarah Laskow
Not All Calories Are the Same, Says Harvard Study
A new Harvard study challenges the traditional understanding of calories, postulating that it’s all about quality and not quantity. For those looking to lose weight, the source of those calories is more influential than the sheer number. ABC News reports on the results: The kind of calories the body gets may affect how efficiently people [...]
June 27, 2012 |
By Rachel Nuwer
Finally, Male Birth Control Even Dudes Will Use
Here's a male contraceptive from the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute that a) works pretty well and b) shouldn't be too burdensome for dudes.
June 27, 2012 |
By Sarah Laskow
In 45 States, It’s Illegal to Keep Your HIV Status Secret
Should it be illegal to keep your HIV status a secret? Most states agree that it should. Forty-five states have laws against HIV-positive persons not disclosing their status during sex, acts of prostitution, needle exchanges or when donating organs, blood or semen. Some of those states also make it illegal for HIV-positive persons to bite [...]
June 26, 2012 |
By Rachel Nuwer
How to Give a Ferret a Deadly Flu
The secret to airborne bird flu is out. Dutch researchers published a controversial paper yesterday that detailed how they caused a deadly strain of H5N1 bird flu to transform from a disease transmittable only through contact to one that could be transmitted through the air. The team used ferrets as test subjects, since they respond [...]
June 22, 2012 |
By Sarah Laskow
Your Kid’s New Dermatologists: Barney and Kung Fu Panda
Next time your kid has a pesky wart to remove, it could be everybody’s favorite big purple dinosaur who assists with the procedure. A new study indicates that children are less angsty when having their warts removed if they’ve first watched their favorite movie or TV show just before going under the knife. Reuters Health [...]
June 22, 2012 |
By Rachel Nuwer
