News Articles

Coffee has been enjoying a health resurgence. It was once considered a bad thing because of caffeine but now it is lauded for its antioxidants. A new paper details how free radicals and antioxidants behave during every stage of the coffee brewing process, from intact bean to coffee brew.

Olive oil, canola oil, and vegetable oil largely consist of unsaturated fatty acids, whereas animal fat is richer in the saturated ones. After a meal, carbohydrates are the primary source of energy production by the heart but under fasting conditions, free fatty acids become the major energy producer. 

Metformin, a medication commonly taken for Type II diabetes, is being found in freshwater systems worldwide, and a new study says that it causes physical changes in male fish exposed to doses similar to the amount in wastewater effluent. It causes intersex in fish - male fish that produce eggs - according to the study in Chemosphere.
Because intersex fish occur more often downstream from wastewater treatment plants, studies have investigated the effect of hormones from birth control pills, but metformin is not a hormone and it targets blood sugar regulation so the correlation is surprising.

A new study concludes that most U.S. clinical registries that collect data on patient outcomes are substandard and lack critical features necessary to render the information they collect useful.
A paper in the Journal for Healthcare Quality reveals poor data monitoring and reporting that researchers say are hurting national efforts to study disease, guide patient choice of optimal treatments, formulate rational health policies and track in a meaningful way how well physicians and hospitals perform.

Citizen science, where the public pitches in to make large-scale analyses of data possible, has successfully predicted the path of a deadly plant disease, Sudden Oak Death, over a six-year period. 
The disease has killed millions of oak and tanoak trees in California and Oregon and can infect more than 100 susceptible host plants and can spread from nursery stock to residential landscapes. Starting in 2008, 1,000 volunteers collected leaf samples from trees in metropolitan and urban-wildland areas. 

Scientists have discovered a way to prevent the development of multiple sclerosis in mice. Using a drug that blocks the production of a certain type of immune cell linked to inflammation and autoimmunity, the researchers successfully protected against the onset of MS in an animal model of the disease. 
In the immune system, two kinds of T cells strike a delicate balance--T helper cells (Th17) activate the immune system, protecting against infections and cancers, while regulatory T cells (Tregs) suppress the system, keeping it in check. A disparity between these cell types, where there are too many Th17 and not enough Tregs, can lead to a hyperactive immune system, resulting in inflammation, tissue damage, and autoimmune disease. 

Global incomes continue to rise, more people are living more comfortably, globalization has been a huge win for many developing nations and that means more people than ever can afford air conditioning.
While some policy makers live in an idealized developed world where more wind and solar power at ever higher costs will solve the emissions problem, that lacks fairness for people who are only now able to afford to live well. More people are going to need electricity and that means we need to embrace true green energy and not fudge numbers to where political winners look like viable solutions for the future. Without viable clean energy the stress on energy prices and infrastructure will mean poorer people stay shackled to the past.

The famous sunspots on the surface of the Earth's star result from strong magnetic fields. Their numbers are an important indicator of the state of activity on the Sun. At the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Kraków, Poland, researchers have been conducting multifractal analysis into the changes in the numbers of sunspots and found that the graphs were asymmetrical in shape, suggesting that sunspots may be involved in unknown physical processes.

The original NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of the famous Pillars of Creation - in the Eagle Nebula, Messier 16 - was taken two decades ago and immediately became its most famous picture. Since then, these billowing clouds, which extend over a few light-years, have awed the public. 

One of the concerns about the switch from incandescent to fluorescent lighting was that while the ballasts are higher frequency now - humans do not have to hear that annoying hum - they were right in the range that pets still hear.

Interventional treatments such as surgery provide good functional outcomes and a high cure rate for patients with lower-grade arteriovenous malformations (AVMs) of the brain, according to a new study. These findings contrast with a recent trial reporting better outcomes without surgery or other interventions for AVMs.

A study in Science has tied the aging process to the deterioration of tightly packaged bundles of cellular DNA known as heterochromatinand say that the genetic mutations underlying Werner syndrome, a disorder that leads to premature aging and death, results in the deterioration of these bundles.
The discovery used stem cell and gene-editing technologies and could lead to ways of countering age-related physiological declines by preventing or reversing damage to heterochromatin.