News Articles

A number of people are concerned about BPA in plastics but that is far less warranted than concern about plastics themselves. 
In 1967's "The Graduate", the following conversation took place between an older man and the young protagonist:
McGuire: I just want to say one word to you. Just one word. Benjamin: Yes, sir. McGuire: Are you listening? Benjamin: Yes, I am. McGuire: Plastics.

Lower incomes are associated with higher obesity, though lower income in America is very much a relative term. Poor and minority kids lead the country in bedroom television ownership, so being poor in the US is not the same as in other countries.

With over one-third of American children overweight, the search is on to figure out why. Happy Meals get blamed, as do sodas, trans fats and just about everything else.A new study even blames television - not necessarily how much time is spent watching it, but having it in the bedroom. The paper in JAMA associated a bedroom television with weight gain in children and adolescents, and say it is unrelated to the time they spend watching.

Maybe photosynthesis can be improved.
That may sound like blasphemy but the easy solution to growing more food is teaching crop plants to concentrate carbon dioxide in their leaves. That could increase photosynthetic efficiency by 60 percent and yields by as much as 40 percent, according to a new study.

Two analyses examined issues of sexual orientation and intimate partner violence, including its impact on substance abuse and physical and mental health.

There are many enduring mysteries regarding the composition of the Earth's atmosphere but one may be a little closer to being solved. Researchers have discovered a microbial soil process that helps ensure that the explosive gas hydrogen remains at trace levels. 
In recent decades it was found that about 80 percent of all hydrogen released into the air is rapidly removed through soil activity, but exactly what is recycling it, and how, has remained unclear.

By now, almost everyone understands computers and that current technologies for writing, storing, and reading information are either charge-based or spin-based.
Spin-based devices operate on the principle that in materials like iron, electron spins generate magnetism and the position of the north and south pole of the magnet can be used to store the zeros and ones. This technology is behind both magnetic stripe cards and terabyte computer hard disks. Since these devices are based on spin, they are more robust against charge perturbations but the drawback is that in order to reverse the north and south poles of the magnet, i.e., flip the zero to one or vice versa, the magnetic bit has to be coupled to an electro-magnet or to another permanent magnet.

Health costs saved or gained, like all claims about what did not happen, are made-up metrics, so we can either accept or not accept the notion that 4 million criminals are now going to have free health care and that will cost us less money than if they didn't have health care and that caused them to commit more crimes and then get health care.
Politicians coming up on a mid-term election have to take their health reform victories where they can get them and the work led by Marsha Regenstein, PhD, who is a professor of health policy at
the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services (SPHHS)

Scientists at Imperial College London have discovered that iron deficiency may increase stroke risk by making the blood more sticky.
The findings, published in the journal PLOS ONE, could ultimately help with stroke prevention.
Every year, 15 million people worldwide suffer a stroke. Nearly six million die and another five million are left permanently disabled. The most common type, ischaemic stroke, occurs because the blood supply to the brain is interrupted by small clots.
In the last few years, several studies have shown that iron deficiency, which affects around two billion people worldwide, may be a risk factor for ischaemic stroke in adults and in children. How iron deficiency could raise stroke risk has been a puzzle for researchers.

Glioblastoma is the most common primary malignant adult brain tumor and, despite treatment advances in recent years, the average survival of patients enrolled in clinical trials is less than 16 months.
Few patients live beyond five years.
Glioblastoma
tumors are characterized by angiogenesis — the formation of new blood vessels that support tumor growth stimulated by the GBM-produced vascular endothelial growth factor A (VEGF-A).
Bevacizumab is a monoclonal antibody that targets VEGF-A production to block the growth of tumor-derived blood vessels.

PHILADELPHIA – A new study provides evidence for what many people who experience headache have long suspected—having more stress in your life leads to more headaches. The study released today will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology's 66th Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, April 26 to May 3, 2014.
For the study, 5,159 people age 21 to 71 in the general population were surveyed about their stress levels and headaches four times a year for two years. Participants stated how many headaches they had per month and rated their stress level on a scale of zero to 100.

Peru's treasured Manu National Park is the world's top biodiversity hotspot for reptiles and amphibians, according to a new survey published last week by biologists from the University of California, Berkeley, Southern Illinois University in Carbondale (SIU-Carbondale) and Illinois Wesleyan University.
The park, which encompasses lowland Amazonian rain forest, high-altitude cloud forest and Andean grassland east of Cuzco, is well known for its huge variety of bird life, which attracts ecotourists from around the globe. More than 1,000 species of birds, about 10 percent of the world's bird species; more than 1,200 species of butterflies; and now 287 reptiles and amphibians have been recorded in the park.