Health & Medicine
- Health & Medicine
More than a Kick
Nicotine ramps up activity throughout the body, making the drug a suspect in many tobacco-related ailments.
- Health & Medicine
Perk Up Food Flavors with. . .Black Plastic? (with pesto recipe)
Pesto, a zesty sauce for pasta and spread for crusty breads, typically derives much of its flavor from basil. The fresher this herb, the richer the pesto’s flavor–which is why many people with a pesto passion keep a basil patch outside the kitchen door. USDA scientists compare the yield and quality of identical crop cultivars […]
- Health & Medicine
Soy Land, Soy Land
Field of soy in the American Midwest. Having grown up in the heart of the Corn Belt, I can remember childhood visits to kin requiring car rides for hours past fields planted with razor-sharp rows of maize. Even as a preschooler, it was reassuring because I could relate to corn. It was that delicious stuff […]
- Health & Medicine
Academic Impacts of Vegetarian Childhoods
Teens are always looking for creative excuses for late homework, low test scores, and waning attention in class. Any who stumbled onto a copy of the September American Journal of Clinical Nutrition may have uncovered the basis for a particularly novel rationalization: “My parents made me a vegetarian.” Plants do not make vitamin B-12, also […]
- Health & Medicine
Unexpected Sources of Peanut Allergy
Attention new moms: Some lotions and creams for soothing scaly or irritated skin run the risk of triggering immune reactions in your infant that could lead to a serious food allergy months later. Or so conclude the authors of a new study in England. U.S. products explicitly marketed for use on a baby’s skin, such […]
- Health & Medicine
Pressurized Pregnancies: Schizophrenia linked to fetal diuretic exposure
A Danish study has found that pregnant women who take diuretic medication for high blood pressure during the third trimester substantially raise the chances that their unborn children will develop schizophrenia by age 35.
- Health & Medicine
Tough Nut Is Cracked: Antibody treatment stifles peanut reactions
Researchers have successfully demonstrated the first preventive drug treatment against peanut allergy.
- Health & Medicine
Abortion-cancer link is rejected
A workshop report concludes that abortions do not increase a woman's chance of developing breast cancer.
- Health & Medicine
Protective virus ties up HIV docking sites
A harmless virus that seems to keep HIV infections from progressing to AIDS appears to do so by occupying key molecular receptors on immune cells.
- Health & Medicine
Gene mutation for color blindness found
Scientists have identified the gene that is mutated in people who have color blindness on the Pacific island of Pingelap, perhaps paving the way for genetic screening.
- Health & Medicine
Enzyme needed to degrade acetaldehyde
A shortage of the enzyme ALDH-2, which is needed to break down alcohol in the body, causes a buildup of the cancer-linked chemical acetaldehyde, perhaps explaining why alcoholics lacking ALDH-2 have high rates of mouth and throat cancers.
- Health & Medicine
Scarce-Banana Scare—But don’t kiss that banana good-bye yet
Headlines have been blaring that the banana will be extinct within 10 years but crop specialists say that’s not likely. The furor has called attention, however, to a problem of worldwide banana supply and to the possibility that we’ll be peeling things a little different in 2013. The fuss started with the Jan. 18 New […]
