Posts

By late May, President George W. Bush was expected to have signed into law the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA), which will prohibit health insurers from canceling or denying coverage or hiking premiums based on a genetic predisposition to a specific disease. The legislation, which sailed through the House and Senate, also bars employers from using genetic data to hire, fire, promote or make other employment-related decisions. The measure caps more than a decade of political wrangling: Representative Louise Slaughter of New York introduced the first genetic antidiscrimination legislation 13 years ago....

Joe Biden made climate change and racism top issues when running for president. Now he’s melding them with the selection of his Cabinet. Rep. Deb Haaland, Biden’s pick to head the Interior Department, would become the first Native American Cabinet secretary in history if confirmed. Michael Regan, head of North Carolina’s Department of Environmental Quality, would be the first Black man to lead EPA. Both have resumes with strong climate credentials and represent a significant win for the progressive movement, which pressured the Biden transition team to back off from establishment candidates it had favored for each role....

Kat Gehrke, 25, had no idea that delivering her first baby would lead to the biggest nightmare of her life. On July 5, 2006, Gehrke had a cesarean section at Indian River Memorial Hospital in Vero Beach, Fla.—after more than 20 hours of labor her cervix had not dilated more than 1.6 inches (four centimeters). The procedure seemed to go off without a hitch, and her doctor sent her and new daughter Kaylie home after just two days in the hospital....

The annual jab fest for the seasonal flu is already underway, scaring needle-wary youngsters and leaving many grown-ups wondering if the annual stick in the arm is right for them. In recent years research has shown that the mélange of strains in each year’s flu shot and exposure to previous flus can provide some immunity decades later to people exposed to closely related influenza iterations. For example, people who were born before the mid-1950s (when H1N1 stopped circulating) showed a better defense against the recent H1N1 virus....

After the noisy 2020 election season in the United States, journalists wrote extensively about the inaccuracy of preelection polls. They weren’t the only ones. According to a report by the American Association for Public Opinion Research entitled 2020 Pre-Election Polling: An Evaluation of the 2020 General Election Polls, 2020 polls were off by the largest magnitude in decades at both the federal and state levels. For example, a CNN poll predicted that Joe Biden would lead Donald Trump by 12 percentage points....

Jeff Bezos, the billionaire founder of the spaceflight company Blue Origin, launched into suborbital space with three other people today (July 20) on the first crewed mission of the company’s New Shepard vehicle—a landmark moment for the man and the space tourism industry. “Blue Control, Bezos. Best day ever!” Bezos said while in flight. The autonomous New Shepard, which consists of a rocket topped by a capsule, lifted off from Blue Origin’s Launch Site One near the West Texas town of Van Horn today at 9:11 a....

April 26, 1986: During routine testing, reactor number 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant explodes, triggering the worst catastrophe in the history of the civilian use of nuclear energy. September 22, 2006: On a trial run, experimental maglev train Transrapid 08 plows into a maintenance vehicle at 125 mph near Lathen, Germany, spewing wreckage over hundreds of yards, killing 23 passengers and severely injuring 10 others. Human error was behind both accidents....

The U.S. government’s proposed changes to nutrition labels are an important and positive step, and could even spur food companies to give consumers healthier options, but the changes are only part of what’s needed to stem the obesity epidemic, public health experts say. Today (Feb. 27), the Food and Drug Administration announced plans to update nutrition labels to better reflect the latest nutrition science, and the growing understanding of the link between diet and chronic diseases, the agency said....

In this age of open discussion about the penises of a supreme court justice and the nation’s president, perhaps it’s no surprise that people as freely try to draw parallels between a man’s behaviors and the size of his penis. Many of us have seen—and perhaps had—a similar response to seeing images of a man swaggering around in Starbucks with an AR-15 slung over his back: “Oh, look at that loser, he must be compensating for something, ha ha....

How’s this for preventative medicine?: Ingesting bacteria may help to prevent infections. Researchers at Creighton University School of Medicine in Omaha, Neb., recently demonstrated that regular doses of probiotic bacteria given to hospital patients on mechanical ventilators resulted in fewer cases of pneumonia. The findings were published online June 3 in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. Probiotics, live microorganisms thought to provide a health benefit when consumed in sufficient amounts, are frequently used to mitigate a variety of conditions, including digestive disorders such as antibiotic-associated diarrhea, lactose intolerance and irritable bowel syndrome....

A poor diet can eat away at brain health. Now a study in Neurology helps elucidate why. It suggests that eating a lot of sugar or other carbohydrates can be hazardous to both brain structure and function. Diabetes, which is characterized by chronically high levels of blood glucose, has been linked to an elevated risk of dementia and a smaller hippocampus, a brain region critical for memory. The new study sought to identify whether glucose had an effect on memory even in people without the disease because having it could induce other brain changes that confound the data....

The Obama administration approved a management plan yesterday for Arctic fisheries that prevents the expansion of commercial fishing into vast swaths of sea whose ice is being melted by rising temperatures. “As Arctic sea ice recedes due to climate change, there is increasing interest in commercial fishing in Arctic waters,” Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said in a statement yesterday. “We are in a position to plan for sustainable fishing that does not damage the overall health of this fragile ecosystem....

It’s a tempting—some might say irresistible—destination. Sending a spacecraft to the planet, dubbed Proxima b, would give humans their first view of a world outside the Solar System. “Clearly it would be a huge step forward for humanity if we could reach out to the nearest star system,” says Bruce Betts, director of science and technology for the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California. The data beamed back could reveal whether the alien world offers the right conditions for life—and maybe even whether anything inhabits it....

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. Have you ever experienced a phantom phone call or text? You’re convinced that you felt your phone vibrate in your pocket, or that you heard your ring tone. But when you check your phone, no one actually tried to get in touch with you. You then might plausibly wonder: “Is my phone acting up, or is it me?...

Puberty represents a time of chaos, when emotions, appearance and internal chemistry are changing like at a frantic pace. And so, it is no wonder that this developmental period is also time of high anxiety that occasionally can lead to the all-too-common teenage angst as well as panic and suicidal tendencies. Now, researchers at the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center in New York City have found the switch that transforms quiescent children into raging, hormonal teens....

If you think that nasty co-worker is creating problems for you alone, think again. His rudeness may have a ripple effect that extends as far as your spouse’s workplace. A recent study at Baylor University found that working with horrible colleagues can generate far-reaching stress that follows you home, causing unhappiness for your spouse and family and ultimately affecting your partner’s job. The study was published in August in the Journal of Organizational Behavior....

Did you like this article? Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication. Salt from the Sahara desert was one of the major trade goods of ancient West Africa where very little naturally occurring deposits of the mineral could be found. Transported via camel caravans and by boat along such rivers as the Niger and Senegal, salt found its way to trading centres like Koumbi Saleh, Niani, and Timbuktu, where it was either passed further south or exchanged for other goods such as ivory, hides, copper, iron, and cereals....

By Barbara Lewis ATHENS (Reuters) - “Best before” dates on food add to a mountain of waste in Europe and could be scrapped for some long-life produce, a group of European Union states have argued in a discussion paper prepared for an agriculture ministers meeting on Monday. Food waste in the West has become a hot topic because of its environmental and humanitarian implications. A report last year found up to half of the food produced worldwide was wasted because of poor harvesting, storage and transport methods, as well as irresponsible retailer and consumer behavior....

APRIL 1959 PLANET OR ESCAPEE?— “In their relatively brief acquaintance with Pluto, astronomers have begun to doubt that this object is a planet at all. Pluto’s eccentric orbit is tilted at a considerable angle to the plane of the ecliptic, in which the orbits of the other planets lie. Even on its closest approach to our region of the solar system, it will shine no brighter than Triton, one of Neptune’s two satellites, suggesting that it is no larger....

Last November, Russia launched a widely anticipated mission to the Martian moon Phobos. The craft would gather samples from the moon’s surface to help determine if future space crews could obtain valuable supplies of oxygen there en route to Mars. For Russia, the mission was supposed to mark a “cavalry charge” that would redeem a quarter-century of interplanetary impotence. Instead it turned into a cosmic humiliation when the craft died shortly after takeoff and fell back to Earth....