Does high fructose corn syrup deserve such a bad rap? (p. 22)

Similarities between tumors in people and dogs mean canine studies can inform human disease. (p. 26)

Premature puberty among girls poses scientific puzzle. (p. 26)

Mentors at the Rockefeller Institute had warned Peyton Rous not to waste his career fooling with “the cancer question.” Then he got the bright idea that tumors might be contagious. Rous extracted part of a sarcoma from a hen, strained out the cells and injected the remnants into another bird. The second hen also developed cancer. Something hidden inside the tumor must be causing the cancer. His culprit: a virus. Rous’ finding was met with such resounding disbelief that he soon abandoned the entire line of research. He returned to it 20 years later, still on the unpopular side of scienti... (p. 22)

Each year more than 26 million people in the United States go to a doctor complaining about a cough. Most have colds and will just have to wait it out. Other people cough because they have allergies, asthma, bronchitis, pneumonia or even cancer. In rare instances, there is no known culprit — a person simply starts coughing and can’t stop. What all these patients desperately want, and what doctors don’t have, is a way to just make the cough go away. Americans end up spending $4 billion a year on over-the-counter remedies that the American College of Chest Physicians says show little evid... (p. 22)

When Lewis Carroll sent Alice down the rabbit hole, she encountered a strange and twisted land with distortions of size and time. Some headache experts see something else — the possible ghosts of the author’s migraines, which can leave victims temporarily blinded, nauseated, hallucinatory, numb, unable to concentrate or seeking shelter from painful stings of light and sound. People with migraines travel between two worlds: one in which they are having a migraine and one in which they are not. “I’m very brave generally,” Tweedledum tells Alice, “only today I happen to have a headac... (p. 26)

A generation ago, the battle to survive a heart attack was usually won or lost in the emergency room. Medical advances have now enabled more patients to win that fight and go home from the hospital — but millions of them will face another threat in the years to come. The heart has a monstrous appetite for fuel as it goes about pumping 2,500 gallons of blood a day. During a heart attack, when an artery feeding heart muscle gets choked off, the heart’s oxygen supply is interrupted. If starved of oxygen for too long, a portion of the heart can die, never to revive. Instead, lifeless muscle w... (p. 26)

When it comes to the safety of dyeing food, the one true shade is gray. Artificial colorings have been around for decades, and for just about as long, people have questioned whether tinted food is a good idea. In the 1800s, when merchants colored their products with outright poisons, critics had a pretty good case. Today’s safety questions, though, aren’t nearly so black and white — and neither are the answers. Take the conclusions reached by a recent government inquiry: Depending on your point of view, an official food advisory panel either affirmed that food dyes were safe, questione... (p. 22)

Animals live long and prosper when eating from a menu that puts them just this side of starvation. So far, experiments with yeast, worms, flies, spiders, fish and rodents all have shown the antiaging power of severely restricting calories. And research in rhesus monkeys suggests similar benefits in primates: One study found that monkeys eating 30 percent less than their cage mates appeared to be protected from age-related diseases and had lower mortality 15 to 20 years later. At this moment, human volunteers at three different U.S. sites have given up 25 percent of normal daily calories to tes... (p. 22)

Mice aren’t known for their skill with complicated memory tricks, but they can usually recall their last meal. Once they happen upon food in a laboratory maze, they are pretty good at remembering the location from one trial to the next. In one recent study, though, half the mice got too confused to find their snacks. All the mice in two groups tested could remember the location of a new reward stashed in a vastly different place from an earlier one. But one group had trouble when the payoff lay just slightly off from a previous spot. Those mice had a good excuse, though: Their brains we... (p. 22)