A recent paper examined 45,079 cases of toxoplasmosis in wild mammals—a disease that has been linked to nervous system disorders, cancers and other debilitating chronic conditions—using data from 202 global studies and found wildlife living near dense urban areas, where there are lots of cats carrying the pararsite, were more likely to be infected.

One infected cat can excrete as many as 500 million Toxoplasma oocysts (or eggs) in just two weeks. The oocysts can then live for years in soil and water with the potential to infect any bird or mammal, including humans. Toxoplasmosis is particularly dangerous for pregnant women.

A new paper reaffirms how humankind's embrace of agriculture, and resulting lower 'cost' of food, led to a cultural boom that resulted in mass migration and many of the world's major language families.

If you speak modern Japanese, Korean, Turkish and Mongolian, you have a connection to neolithic millet farmers from the Liao River valley - Inner Mongolia and the provinces of Liaoning and Jilin in China. People speaking nearly 100 dialects and languages across 5,000 miles have a shared genetic ancestry stretching back 9,000 years, the research found.

You may not want to hear the same song over and over, but for patients with mild cognitive impairment or early Alzheimer’s disease, repeated listening to personally meaningful music induces beneficial brain plasticity, according to a new study.

It found that changes in the brain’s neural pathways correlated with increased memory performance on neuropsychological tests, supporting the clinical potential of personalized, music-based interventions for people with dementia.

Coronavirus has been with us for thousands of years and has mutated accordingly. Since it is in the same family as the common cold it was only recognized as distinct a few decades ago, and in the past severe cases were likely just treated as a flu.

But after SARS in 2003 and MERS a decade later, coronavirus has taken the world stage and it is never leaving the lexicon again. Every detected mutation is splashed across media outlets with no end in sight. Nearly everyone has to have been exposed at this point but well over 99 percent are unaffected and that leads to questions about how much more vaccines can help. Are antibodies from infection as good as a vaccination?

They can be, in a counter-intuitive way.

In response to increases in allergies, and then paralyzing schools and businesses because many parents conflate any allergic reaction with anaphylaxis, in 2017 allergists and pediatricians began recommending that parents start to introduce peanut product around the time their child begins solid foods to prevent peanut allergy.

A new study presented at the year’s American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (ACAAI) Annual Scientific Meeting reveals that it makes sense to do the same with eggs.

It's nice that a robot can fold a towel really, really slowly, but they're going to remain an academic gimmick until they can engage in social interactions. Then they could replace people. If you have spent any time on Twitter, you know people are done talking to anyone who does not look, talk, or identify just like them, so robot socialization couldn't come at a better time.