More men than women develop Parkinson’s disease and new work presented at the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies says that it is do to sex differences in how brain cells change. Parkinson’s disease affects about 9 million people and becomes increasingly prevalent with age.
Advocates are claiming medical marijuana can help to fight the opioid epidemic but data show the opposite. Rather than being at lower risk, people who use medical marijuana may be at higher risk for non-medical prescription drug use.Much of medical marijuana usage was always recreational and a new study in the Journal of Addiction Medicine finds that people who use medical marijuana have higher rates of prescription drug use - including pain relievers.Does Use of Medical Marijuana Increase or Decrease Prescription Drug Use?
Though we read a lot of claims about impending extinction, the biological reality is that we don't know anything about 99.9999999 percent of species that have ever lived. And then there are species only newly discovered that are immediately declared endangered because an academic only recently named them in a print journal.
The mix of bacteria (microbiome) of bee bread, the long-term food supply stored within a hive for young bees, is now at risk, according to a new estimate.The scholars are blaming modern monoculture farming, commercial forestry and gardeners could be making it harder for honeybees to store food and fight off diseases, a new study suggests. Human changes to the landscape, such as large areas of monoculture grassland for livestock grazing, and coniferous forests for timber production, is affecting the diversity of the ‘microbiome’ associated with honeybees’ long-term food supply, the authors claim.
One of the most fundamental predictions of Einstein's theory of relativity is the existence of black holes. Although gravitational waves from binary black holes have been detected, direct evidence using electromagnetic waves hasn't happened and astronomers are searching for it with radio telescopes. But then how can you tell them apart? Radio images have a limited resolution and image fidelity and at realistic image resolutions, even highly non-Einsteinian black holes seem like normal black holes.
More competitive animal species, with males that compete intensively for mates, might be more resilient to the effects of climate change, according to a paper in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Sexual selection can provide a buffer against climate change and increase adaptation rates within a changing environment, the authors believe.Moths exposed to increasing temperatures were produced more eggs and had better offspring survival when the population had more males competing for mating opportunities, three males for every female.
Though less than a dozen school children will be slain by a gun in any given year, American society is mobilized with marches and media against firearms. Meanwhile, on average 55,000 Americans will die from the flu, which has a vaccine. In states like California, anti-vaccine sentiment ran so high on the coast that the state had to pass a law forcing parents to comply or not have their kids enrolled. Some schools in Marin county had fewer than 30 percent of children vaccinated. Philosophical exemptions just by families in the wealthiest parts of California exceeded the number of religious exemptions nationwide - by 1000 percent.
Pelleh Farms of Swan Lake, New York has recalled its Pasteurized Whole Organic Milk Non-Homogenized products due to improper pasteurization. At least it was almost pasteurized. In the demographic that thinks organic food is good, vaccines are bad, and science stopped at 1860, raw milk is on trend. They intentionally go without pasteurization in the belief that it contains more nutrients than safe milk.Proper pasteurization heats milk to 161 degrees Fahrenheit to effectively eliminate all pathogenic bacteria, such as Listeria and Salmonella. Raw milk chooses to let such bacteria remain, which is why pasteurization is credited with saving hundreds of millions of children since it became commonplace.
When the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention drastically lowered the 'blood sugar' level, the HbA1C test, to 5.7 percent for a potential precursor to disease labeled "prediabetes" the rest of the world jeered. In China, that would mean 500 million people worried they have a disease. In America, it would mean 80 million more potential patients. When it came to data, less than 5 percent of those with that A1C level would ever go on to develop type 2 diabetes...in their entire lives.
A recent analysis links sudden loss of wealth in middle or old age with a 50 percent higher risk of dying than those who do not have such loss. The effect can last for two decades, and whether participants are very wealthy or have only modest savings made no difference.The paper is in the Journal of the American Medical Association, and they have gotten increasingly epidemiology focused and less scientific as the decade has progressed, so some skepticism is in order. And it is justified, although corporate journalism claims have repeated the press release without reading the study itself.
Raw milk, which has been known for over a century to substantially increase the risk for bacterial illness, has led to another permanent government-ordered shutdown. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York entered a consent decree of permanent injunction against Vulto Creamery LLC of Walton, N.Y. so that they cannot prepare, process, manufacture, pack and/or hold FDA-regulated food products until they can ensure that Listeria monocytogenes, which can cause a rare but potentially life-threatening illness, is not present in their facility and their food.
The Justice Department has said that ending the flow of illegal opioids in the U.S. is a top law-enforcement priority but the U.S. Food and Drug Administration doesn't want to wait years for courts to help, they are directly calling on the public to pressure sites like Google, Facebook, and Twitter to put a crimp on supplement and opioid sales.At the National Rx Drug Abuse and Heroin Summit, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb called on social media companies and internet companies to stop taking money for ads. Good luck with that. What he was really seeking is public help in pressuring them. Facebook and Twitter have repeatedly shown they are modern-day arms dealers and happily sell to both sides, so only the public can put the needed pressure on them.
A new study takes Norwegians to task for continuing to use wood stoves as part of their bucolic northern heritage. Drive outside cities and it is common to see stacks of wood lining the walls of houses and smoke rising from the chimneys, especially on cold days. Due to that heritage, there was even a national "wood night program" on NRK, the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, which ran for 12 hours and attracted international attention.
