Intermittent fasting, and fasting in general, has been a popular fad health gimmick, but the science isn't on its side. Instead, proponents believe mice are little people so if mice weaned on starvation diets lived longer, people would also.
If you want to avoid ticks in the woods, wear long clothing or use a scientifically-proven repellent like DEET, IR3535 , or picaridin. Forget products claiming they are 'green' or have citronella, there is a reason that people who buy alternatives to DEET are over-represented in getting lyme disease. Alternatives don't work and, if you are in the northeast, 50% of adult ticks will carry Lyme disease bacteria so you are flipping a coin by avoiding science.
In British Iron Age society, land was inherited through the female line and husbands moved to live with the wife’s community. Strong women like Margaret Thatcher resulted.That was inferred due to DNA sequenced from members of a single community, over 50 ancient genomes from a set of burial grounds in Dorset, that were in use before and after the Romans tried to do in AD 43 what they did to Israel a few decades later. They reconstructed a family tree with many different branches and found most members traced their maternal lineage back to a single woman from centuries before while relationships through the father’s line were almost absent.
Production of most major foods involve nitrate and phosphate fertilizers, but excessive fertilizer use is bad for the environment. That is why scientists came up with modern technologies that use less fertilizer and, on the other end, fewer pesticides. But some countries or processes like "organic" ban modern products, so their nitrogen runoff is excessive. Perhaps a new form of genetic engineering will be the first product to be allowed under their marketing guidelines since Mutagenesis.
Climate has always shifted but concerns about faster changes brought on by the modern world have led the authors of a new paper to worry that current high-volume sources of apples could lose their apex status to other areas.The paper in the pay-to-publish journal Environmental Research Letters analyzed over 40 years of climate conditions they correlate to the growth cycle, bud break to fruit, of apple trees. They sound the alarm that the largest apple-producing counties in the US (Yakima in Washington, Kent in Michigan and Wayne in New York) have already been impacted.
Electric cars and solar and wind energy alternative schemes have a few crippling limitations; low energy densities and unavailability when people need energy most. Batteries could help with that second one except current batteries are legacy technology that are held back by subsidies and mandates, not improved.
Since being discovered in 1993, microRNAs have gone on to win a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, thanks to private sector uptake with the COVID-19 vaccines that saved the world during the pandemic that emerged from Wuhan, China in early 2020. Errors in the manufacture of over 1,000 microRNAs can put us at risk for developmental disorders, cancer, or neurodegenerative disease and a new study looks at a molecular machine called Microprocessor (MP), which trims longer molecules called primary microRNAs (pri-miRNAs) - without cutting other kinds of RNA that resemble pri-miRNAs.
No one likes getting a needle but most want a vaccine. A new paper shows progress for messenger RNA (mRNA), that can be sprayed and inhaled thanks to improved lipid-polymer nanoparticle technology for holding mRNA that is stable when nebulized and successfully delivers aerosols, liquid droplets, in mouse lungs. A mouse study means this is only EXPLORATORY but the authors of the paper, including scientists from oRNA Therapeutics (RNA medicine) and Moderna (mRNA medicine), have filed for a patent while they get ready to see about human trials.
Attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his US followers over the last 25 years have staunchly opposed vaccines, latching on to any claim that they cause autism or should be available for lawsuits even if they harm no one.They really won't like a new experimental vaccine for Smallpox and Monkeypox that avoids the side effects of a current live virus version while not needing two doses, as the replication-deficient virus version does. It uses the horsepox virus as a protective agent to confer the safety of a multi-dose vaccine in a single shot.
General medicine, routine visits and such, have gradually gone from M.D.s to including Osteopaths and now Physicians Assistants with no decline in quality, and Large Language Models, colloquially called "Artificial Intelligence", like ChatGPT can assist at very low cost.
Cigarettes are the top lifestyle risk factor for getting cancer, though alcohol and obesity have begun to close the gap as awareness of the risks of cigarettes, coupled with more nicotine smoking cessation and harm reduction tools, have caused cigarette use to decline.Even if you get cancer, quitting smoking improves outcomes.
When Senator Elizabeth Warren had her claims of native ancestry debunked by DNA testing, it was a warning shot to everyone who identifies that way - don't take a test. Most native Americans had long said that anyway, they knew how biology worked better Washington DC staffers. After five generations there is a chance there will be no evidence of an ancestor so natives have long told their communities not to participate. If there are only a few hundred in a database, the database is meaningless and natives tribes can continue their 'we agree you are and you agree you are native' policy rather than having evidence.
Testicular cancer is the most common solid tumor in young men, with approximately 10,000 diagnoses in the U.S. each year.
