All Stories by Ben Harder
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Boyish Brains: Plastic chemical alters behavior of female mice
Exposure to the main ingredient of polycarbonate plastics can alter brain formation in female mouse fetuses and make the lab animals, later in life, display a typically male behavior pattern.
- Earth
Brain Delay: Air pollutants linked to slow childhood mental development
Pollutants spewing from vehicles and power plants may be harmful to fetal brains.
- Health & Medicine
Ultrasound’s New Focus
No longer limiting the use of sound waves to diagnostic medicine, researchers are studying high-intensity focused ultrasound as a treatment for uterine fibroids, breast cancer, prostate cancer, and other cancers.
- Health & Medicine
Dementia off the Menu: Mediterranean diet tied to low Alzheimer’s risk
People 65 years of age and older who eat a Mediterranean-style diet that's rich in plant matter and fish and low in saturated fat are less likely than their peers to develop Alzheimer's disease.
- Health & Medicine
Microbe Hunt: Novel bacterium infects immune-deficient people
A newfound bacterium can cause illness in people who have a rare, inherited form of immune deficiency.
- Humans
A Shot against Pandemic Flu: Vaccines would play pivotal role in response
Mass vaccination should be the linchpin of the U.S. response to an influenza pandemic, according to new computer simulations.
- Earth
Volcanic mineral caused rare cancer in Turkey
In two Turkish villages, nearly half of all deaths since 1980 have resulted from a form of cancer caused by inhaling erionite, a brittle and fibrous volcanic mineral that looks similar to wool.
- Humans
Two-fifths of Amazonian forest is at risk
The Amazon basin's forest may lose 2.1 million square kilometers by 2050 if current development trends go unabated.
- Health & Medicine
XXL from Too Few Zs? Skimping on sleep might cause obesity, diabetes
Widespread sleep deprivation could partly explain the current epidemics of both obesity and diabetes.
- Health & Medicine
On a dare, teen advances medical science
A 16-year-old daredevil inadvertently demonstrated the incubation period of a common roundworm after she swallowed an earthworm that harbored larvae of the parasite.
- Humans
Science’s New Guard: Winners of annual competition get honors and hefty scholarships
For her water-quality research project, an 18-year-old from Utah earned top honors among 40 competitors in the final phase of the annual Intel Science Talent Search.
- Earth
Manufacturers agree to phase out nonstick chemical
Complying with a request from the Environmental Protection Agency, the companies that make the likely carcinogen perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) have agreed to phase out its release worldwide by 2015.
