News Articles

Researchers have matched an upward curve in temperatures in the last few decades with increases in patient's seeking treatment for kidney stones, which both reflects and foretells a warming planet's impact on human health, they say. Of course, they also found increases in very low temperatures.

Researchers using the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico discovered a split-second burst of radio waves, the first time that a so-called "fast radio burst" has been detected using an instrument other than the Parkes radio telescope in Australia.
Scientists using the Parkes Observatory have recorded a handful of such events but because no other facilities did, the assumption was that the Australian instrument was picking up signals originating from sources on or near Earth.

There is a belief that someone decides to try a cigarette, reads a warning label, and then never does. This belief is perpetuated by the industry that has built itself around taxing and penalizing cigarette companies and taking that money to lobby against cigarettes.
It is the perfect business model because it does not work, and so there will always be a market.
Every once in a while, psychologists will do some surveys and provide a paper reaffirming new ways to make sure anti-smoking efforts are always funded but never succeed. In this case, by saying warning labels just need to be bigger.

Sometimes we have to wonder in amazement about things found out in the universe. Case in point: a slinky string of pearls twisted into a corkscrew shape.Nothing special about that. Except this string is 100,000 light years long.
The pearls in the string are superclusters of blazing, blue-white, newly born stars
and the structure forms a bridge between two giant elliptical galaxies that are colliding. These young, blue "super star clusters" are evenly spaced along the chain at separations of 3,000 light-years from one another.

There are a lot of conflicting reports about the common elbow surgery made famous by Major League Baseball pitcher, Tommy John - Ulna Collateral Ligament (UCL) reconstruction surgery. Some reports show it helps pitchers win more games, some show it does not.

It's been known for some time that  gastric bypass surgery
 doesn't just help obese patients lose weight, it also cures diabetes in the majority of patients that undergo it. Type 2 diabetes is linked to diabetes but studies have found that gastric bypass surgery can rapidly put diabetes into a state of remission - regardless of weight loss.
Improved insulin resistance within the first week after surgery remains unexplained but a new paper in Endocrinology says it may be explained by the actions of specialized cells in the intestine that secrete a cocktail of powerful hormones when we eat.  

Researchers have discovered the link between antibiotics and bacterial biofilm formation leading to chronic lung, sinus and ear infections. Bacterial biofilms can actually thrive, rather than decrease, when given low doses of antibiotics.
 Biofilms are highly structured communities of microorganisms that attach to one another and to surfaces. The microorganisms group together and form a slimy, polysaccharide cover. This layer is highly protective for the organisms within it, and when new bacteria are produced they stay within the slimy layer. With the introduction of antibiotic-produced glycogen, the biofilms have an almost endless food source that can be used once antibiotic exposure has ended.

If a young patient needs anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) surgery, it's better to get it done. Postponing is risks secondary knee injuries, according to a paper at the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine's (AOSSM) Annual Meeting.
The anterior cruciate ligament is one of the four major ligaments connecting the thighbone (femur), shinbone (tibia), and kneecap (patella) to form the knee joint. The cruciate Ligaments are found inside the knee joint and control its back and forth motion and they cross each other to form an 'x' shape, with the posterior cruciate ligament in back and the anterior cruciate ligament in front.

Tofu is prized by vegetarians as an alternate source of protein, if they don't mind highly processed food that will make men sterile.
But Dr. Oz, the Cornell Food and Brand Lab and others swear by it. Yet Tofu is not a food fad for Millennial women because of any marketing claims about health benefits, they just want dishes that are quick, easy to cook and that don't have calories. 
"They basically seem to care less about any health benefits of Tofu," said lead Cornell researcher Brian Wansink, "They eat it to look good and because it's quick to cook and it's filling."

Vasectomy is a common form of contraception in the U.S., with about 15% of men having the procedure. Prostate cancer is the second-leading cause of cancer death among U.S. men, so identifying risk factors for lethal prostate cancer is important for public health.
A new study by researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health found that vasectomy was associated with a small increased risk of prostate cancer but a stronger risk for advanced or lethal prostate cancer. The association remained even among men who received regular PSA screening, suggesting the increased risk of lethal cancer cannot be explained by diagnostic bias. This was the largest and most comprehensive study to date to look at the link between vasectomy and prostate cancer.

It's not well known to urban environmentally conscious people but rural people know that deer are a lot like rats - they will eat everything if you don't stop them.
Because state forests are part of a political machine, various political lobbying has blocked biology and that led to an overabundance of deer and decades of damage.
But regulated deer hunts in Indiana state parks helped damaged forests recover nicely. The big win, found analysis of a 17-year-long Indiana Department of Natural Resources policy of organized hunts in state parks, was for native tree seedlings, herbs and wildflowers once rendered scarce by deer. 

The ability to switch out one gene for another in living stem cells puts us on the path to a  science fiction future - fixing disease-causing genes in humans.
But there are concerns about mutations. However, a new study has found that using gene-editing techniques on stem cells doesn't increase the overall occurrence of mutations in the cells.