News Articles

The microbiome is the collection of microorganisms in an environment and plays an important role in human health. An imbalance of 'good' microbes compared to 'bad' is linked to adverse health outcomes. A person's gut microbiome with a higher number of different bacterial species is considered a marker of gut health but no one is really sure what that means.

If marijuana has analgesic properties, people will try it to potentially manage their pain, but it is unclear if it does or not. Fortunately, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration signaled it is expanding its marijuana research program will draft guidelines for producing the drug for scientific and medical research. Until there are science answers it is people trying all of the above, and that creates confounders for other kinds of research. A new study says adults who take prescription opioids for severe pain are more likely to have increased anxiety, depression and substance abuse issues if they also use marijuana. But did marijuana cause the depression or is it being used to mitigate it? 

The ketogenic diet is a high fat, low carbohydrate diet that has become a health fad but it was originally posited as a benefit for people with epilepsy.

Exercise is obviously physically beneficial and there are claims it also releases happiness-inducing hormones - and it may work that way for a few but if you are suffering from depression the last thing you need is someone in a Live Love Laugh shirt asking if you tried going for a walk.

In America, more women than men receive Ph.D.s and at the faculty level are not 2:1 more likely to be offered a job. Not so in France. Only 35 percent of researchers at the French National Centre for Scientific Research are women and the reason may be bias in French culture. In France, the concept of science remains much more strongly associated with masculinity than with femininity and it may lead to scientific evaluation committees putting women at a disadvantage during promotion rounds involving men and women researchers, say social science scholars.

If you read the Anglo-Saxon history of England, the island was a backwater savage place populated by sacrificial druids worshiping angry spiritual gods before Rome paved the way for the arrival of modern inhabitants, but that me just be invading victors writing history.It has been assumed northwestern European trade during the Bronze Age was primarily socially embedded, as in the exchange of gifts.  It turns out people in England, before the invasions by Celts, Picts, Irish, Angles, Saxons, Romans, Vikings, and Normans, were using balance weights and scales to measure the value of materials as early as the late second and early first millennia BC. 

Scholars from  from Boston University School of Medicine), National Center for PTSD at VA Boston Healthcare System and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health have used statistical correlation to conclude that individuals with greater optimism are more likely to live longer, age 85 or older.Obviously a lot of things go into a long life but the authors feel like they are early in positing that positive psychosocial factors promote healthy aging.

A CRISPR gene editing system inside a nanogel delivery system injected into the body could put a stop to the growth of triple-negative breast cancer and it's gone past the first hurdle; human tumor cells and mice.Triple-negative breast cancer has the highest mortality rate of all breast cancers. Lacking estrogen, progesterone and HER2 receptors, it accounts for 12 percent of all breast cancers. It occurs more frequently in women under age 50, in African American women, and in women carrying a BRCA1 gene mutation. Currently, surgery, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy are the best treatment options for this highly aggressive, frequently metastatic cancer, but a lot of research is being done toward targeted therapeutics.

A recent paper found that lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer and intersex (LGBTQI+) refugees and asylum seekers from Tunisia, Syria, Lebanon, Iran and Pakistan reported they were often expected to be "flamboyant" and "outspoken" in their asylum interview, and that overall, asylum seekers were more successful if they could prove their 'gayness' by being involved in gay/queer activism in their country of origin, visiting gay bars, being members of lesbian and gay groups and attending gay pride marches.

A new study finds that French transplant centers would have transplanted about 17,500 kidneys from nearly 28,000 deceased-donor kidneys discarded in the United States between 2004 and 2014.If American standards are simply too high, and not instead that French patients have higher future risk, then many of the 90,000 Americans awaiting a kidney transplant could reap major benefits from the more lax standard in Europe.

The pulsar wind nebula surrounding pulsar B0540-69 has brightened gradually and astrophysicists say that is because  the pulsar experienced a sudden spin-down rate transition. But why? The answer may lie in the mysterious magnetic field structure of the pulsar.

The first analysis of data from the Kardiozive Brno 2030 study examines the association of pet ownership -- specifically dog ownership -- with cardiovascular disease risk factors and cardiovascular health. It finds that owning a pet may help maintain a healthy heart, especially if that pet is a dog.