Articles in the Category: Health and Medicine

SDF: Jackson Browne’s Ode to the Ocean

SDF: Jackson Browne’s Ode to the Ocean
Editor’s Note: It’s Science Ditty Friday. Every Friday REALscience compiles a song (generally with an accompanying video) to kick your weekend off with a musical start. Have a favorite science song? Send it to ditty@realscience.us. When legendary marine biologist Sylvia Earle started exploring...

Bird Flu Flies to Top of the Pathogen Pile

Bird Flu Flies to Top of the Pathogen Pile
After several deaths of people in Cambodia, Vietnam and China recently, the bird flu is making a comeback in public discourse. Concerns are growing about the H5N1 strain of the influenza virus. A few years ago the world-sweeping swine flu stole headlines but the bird flu, which is much more virulent...

Gene Mapping Reaches Major Milestone

Gene Mapping Reaches Major Milestone
For years, scientists have been talking about the era of personalized medicine. While many preparations are underway, the biggest hurdle to widespread adoption has been the prohibitive cost to read a person’s entire DNA. Our genetic code provides a full road map to preventing and treating disease....

The Knowledge Helps London Taxi Drivers Grow Grey Matter

The Knowledge Helps London Taxi Drivers Grow Grey Matter
Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks? Or an adult human for that matter. New research from England shows that not only can we learn throughout our lives but that learning can change the structure of our brains as well. Eleanor Maguire from the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at...

Combustion Whoosh Bottle Experiment Done Right

Combustion Whoosh Bottle Experiment Done Right
Last week, a Minnesota science class got more than they bargained for when a combustible demonstration being done by the physical sciences teacher caught chemicals on a lab table on fire and burned several students, including 15-year-old Dane Neuberger. The burned student says, “I started screaming...

X Prize Opens Centenarian Genome Competition

X Prize Opens Centenarian Genome Competition
The first scientific team to sequence the genomes of 100 one-hundred year olds wins $10 million. It’s the latest offering from the science competition organization, X Prize Foundation, a non-profit designed to spur science and technology by awarding big cash prizes for significant breakthroughs. Their...

Fracking Earthquakes

Fracking Earthquakes
John Long is a geologist for Osborn Heirs, an oil and gas exploration and development company in San Antonio, Texas. When the earth started rumbling beneath is office he had a pretty good idea why. The answer he says is hydraulic fracturing or hydrofracking. He says, “Anytime you take fluid or...

Genetically Modified Foods Abound in U.S.

Genetically Modified Foods Abound in U.S.
Jeffrey Smith has written the book on genetically modified foods (GMOs). Now he’s on a crusade to rid the U.S. of unhealthy food hybrids that not even animals choose to eat. He tells the story of a farmer who was growing corn for his cows. The farmer grew non-GMO corn next to corn that had been...

Outgrowing the Plague

Outgrowing the Plague
Every year about 10-15 people in the U.S. contract the plague. Just the sound of the world plague sounds ominous. But the illness is much less of a death sentence than it was during the Dark Ages. Now, a quick dose of antibiotics and the plagued person is right as rain. After completing the first reconstruction...

Earth Population: 7 Billion and Counting

Earth Population: 7 Billion and Counting
Seven billion is a big number. It looks like this: 7,000,000,000. According to National Geographic magazine If you started counting out loud to 7 billion, it would take you 200 years. And, If you took 7 billion steps it would take you around the globe 133 times. By the end of October, that’s...

Music Meets Science in Biophilia

Music Meets Science in Biophilia
The voice of nature Sir David Attenborough is featured explaining Iceland musician Bjork’s latest venture — Biophilia. It’s part music album reflecting the connection points between sound, nature and technology. It’s an app for iPhones and iPads. It’s a creation generator...

Ig Nobel Prizes Take a Lighter Look at Science

Ig Nobel Prizes Take a Lighter Look at Science
Pee pressure, beer bottle-humping beetles and a wasabi-flavored fire alarm were among the top prizes awarded at Harvard University’s 21st Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, a more laid back version of the Nobel Prize ceremony. Nobel Prize laureates present the Ig Nobels to scientists and philosophers...

Nobel Prize in Medicine Goes to Immunologists

Nobel Prize in Medicine Goes to Immunologists
A pioneering researcher was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine Monday, three days after dying of pancreatic cancer without ever knowing he was about to be honored for his immune system work that he had used to prolong his own life. Ralph Steinman, 1943-2011 Cell biologist Ralph Steinman...

Watch Your Thoughts

Watch Your Thoughts
It would be so much easier to replay dreams, record thoughts and communicate without speaking. But this type of futuristic technology was always thought to be a dream of a far away future or the plot of a science fiction movie. Hollywood Movie clip (L), fMRI image of same clip (R) Researchers at University...

Snail Invasion Poses Health Risks

Snail Invasion Poses Health Risks
It may be the fastest invasion of a slow-moving creature but people in Miami-Dade County are taking care not to mess with the new snail in town. The east African land snail is making a home in south Florida and causing all sorts of problems. They reproduce at an exponential rate and grow fast. They...

Citizen Scientists Discover Key HIV Protein

Citizen Scientists Discover Key HIV Protein
For years, scientists have been saying that some of the biggest discoveries in science will come from non-scientists. And now that prediction is showing promise as two teams of online video game players have helped solve the structure for an important enzyme found in the HIV virus. After medical researchers...

NASA Tracking Satellite Heading for Earth

NASA Tracking Satellite Heading for Earth
NASA says there could be a spectacular show on Friday if someone spots the re-entry of an old satellite. But that is a big if. The space agency is down-playing any danger associated with a 20-year-old, school-bus-sized piece of space junk crashing into a populated area. But there is still a chance that...

A Breath of Medical Fresh Air

A Breath of Medical Fresh Air
Starting in a couple of years you may be able to let out a big sigh of relief that medical diagnostics are moving away from needles and other invasive ways of figuring out what’s going on in the human body. New technology that takes detailed readings from our breath are already being tested to...

Skyscrapers Pose Danger in Hurricanes

Skyscrapers Pose Danger in Hurricanes
When Hurricane Irene began tracking toward New York City, officials feared the worst. In a city full of skyscrapers a hurricane can become a bigger instrument of destruction. Flying glass as windows blow out create dangerous projectiles littering the streets. And the space between highrise buildings...

Millions of Species Yet to be Discovered

Millions of Species Yet to be Discovered
According to a new study it could take 1,200 years, 300,000 researchers and $364 billion to identify and catalog all the species on Earth. New research in the online journal PLoS Biology, a publication of the Public Library of Science uses a new way of calculating just how many plants and animals inhabit...

Yale Undergrads Find Plastic-Eating Fungus

Yale Undergrads Find Plastic-Eating Fungus
The growing garbage problem may have a new solution–fungus that eats plastic. For years mounting mounds of plastic have been choking landfills and polluting the ocean. Now an annual undergraduate trip to the rain forest may have found a solution to the plastic problem. Unleashing creativity in...

Electronic Tattoos

Electronic Tattoos
Ultrathin, flexible circuit boards that attach to the skin could replace conventional wired medical equipment, especially when it comes to monitoring vital signs. New electronic tattoos, also known as epidermal electronics are taking state-of-the-art wireless medical technology and sticking it to a...

Cancer Research Takes Giant Leap Forward

Cancer Research Takes Giant Leap Forward
Already heralded as the biggest step in cancer research in decades, a new cancer treatment is forcing conservative doctors and scientists to use words like, “Amazing.” It’s premature to call this new treatment a cure since it has only been tried in three patients, all of whom have...

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