*** Professor Frederick L. Crane started his career as a botanist. He got a BS in Chemistry from the University of Michigan, Ann arbor in 1950 and received his PhD in 1953. Like many scientists of…

People who engage in binge eating, substance abuse and obsessive compulsive disorder all share a common pattern of decision making and similarities in brain structure, according to a  new paper…

Many people, regardless of occupation, have experienced a difficult boss or annoying co-workers. It might even be harassment or bullying. It's still better than being ignored, according to a paper in…

Psychological stress is harmful to sperm and semen quality, affecting its concentration, appearance, and ability to fertilize an egg, according to a study led by researchers Columbia University's…

One of the nice details lost in the big picture of the Higgs boson discovery of 2012 is that a significant part of the signal put in evidence by ATLAS and CMS is produced by a very special kind of…

In the pop culture world of mainstream media, magic bullets are common. Every week there is a new miracle vegetable and then the following work there will be scare journalism about some chemical. In…

Do you prefer to own a DVD, rather than wondering if Netflix will remove whatever show you wanted to watch this week? If you buy or rent, rather than streaming, you are contributing to billions of…

Not horrified by PETA's graphic images of food processing or titillated by their penchant for exploiting naked women enough to stop eating meat? The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals have…

Photographers like Richard Avedon, Diane Arbus, and Martin Schoeller made their reputations with distinctive visual styles that sometimes required the careful control of lighting possible only in the…

I may have once endorsed Eckhart Tolle by pointing out similarities between Tolle and Muho. Muho wrote to me that he does not know why his own meditative practice worked for him. In my eyes, such…

2.1 billion people, nearly 30% of the world's population, are overweight, according to a new analysis of data from 188 countries.  In 1980, the world was still worried about doomsday prophets…

A multi-institutional team of researchers has pinpointed exactly what goes wrong when chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) patients develop resistance to ibrutinib, a highly effective, precisely…

Circumcision is performed for various reasons, including those that are based on religion, aesthetics, or health, but a paper in BJU International adds to a growing list of advantages to circumcision…

Black trauma patients over the age of 65 are 20 percent less likely to die than white seniors, according to a report in JAMA Surgery. The authors contend that perhaps it is because there is a health…

A nationwide survey indicates that heroin users are attracted to heroin not only for the high, but because it is less expensive and easier to get than prescription painkillers. It was once a gateway…

Most physicians would choose a do-not-resuscitate or "no code" status for themselves when they are terminally ill, yet they tend to pursue aggressive, life-prolonging treatment for patients facing…

People sometimes use indoor tanning in the belief that this will prevent burns when they tan outdoors. However, indoor tanning raises the risk of developing melanoma even if a person has never had…

MINNEAPOLIS – People with high levels of cynical distrust may be more likely to develop dementia, according to a study published in the May 28, 2014, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal…

Heroin is popular again, though not for reasons you expect. Gone are the days of desperate junkies in poverty settings. Now it is primarily cheap young urban professionals. Few studies on the…

Men with gender dysphoria, commonly called gender identity disorder, are born as males but behave as and identify with women and want to change sex. Around puberty, the testes of men start to produce…