Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, a war is raging on in our bodies and we are totally unaware of it. What are these combatants that are scheming against each other to win ultimate control?
Consider the word “pollution.” What comes to mind? Perhaps constellations obscured by thick smog, perhaps the bright-red skyline of some industrial city by night, perhaps factories expelling billows of smoke. Perhaps even specific cities as Beijing and Shanghai, places notorious for having extreme amounts of pollution, to the discomfort of residents and travelers.
Any patient who enters an emergency room with an infectious disease poses a potential threat not only to him or herself, but also to the other patients, doctors and personnel in the hospital. These days, medical institutions across America are finding it necessary to prepare for one infectious disease in particular: Ebola.
You are enjoying your vacation on the East Coast in the thick of the heady, swollen heat of summer. You spend your days roaming swamps, swimming in lakes and sunbathing by the water. One particularly hot day you notice a rash on your leg — it looks a little like a target, or a bulls-eye, but you don’t think much of it. After all, bugs are a consequence of East-Coast weather, and you look forward to when the rash subsides. After a few days, it does.
Henry Molaison (more commonly known as “HM”) is one of the most intriguing gentlemen in the history of neuroscience.
The plethora of F-bombs used in everyday life seems to indicate universal human dissatisfaction. Yet, according to researchers at the University of Vermont, all languages — despite the swearing — reflect a bias for the use of happy words.
Are China’s strict Internet controls acting against its best interests? A survey released on Feb. 12 by the European Chamber of Commerce in China found that most businesses believe they are. Foreign companies that operate in China are frustrated by the fact that China blocks certain websites and restricts Internet access. Eighty-six percent of the companies, which are based in the European Union (EU) and operate in China, said that their business has been negatively affected by the blocking of websites in China.
In 1964 the United States Surgeon General published the first federal government report outlining an indisputable link between smoking and cancer, heart disease and other health problems. Since then, individuals and public health groups have proposed countless methods to help people who are addicted to smoking “kick the habit.” The American Cancer Society (ACS) encourages smokers to participate in the “Great American Smokeout” each year, which proposes that smokers refrain from smoking for 24 hours. The ACS emphasizes that when smokers are engaged in such a behavior, five percent of them go on to quit smoking permanently. Such behavioral therapies began in the 1970s, but they were met with limited success. In the 1990s, pharmacotherapy made its appearance and included nicotine patches and gum. Some individuals chewing nicotine gum stopped smoking, but they became addicted to the healthier but more expensive option of the gum. Electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes or e-cigs) were introduced to the world about ten years ago, and since then, their use has been fraught with everything from confusion to praise to condemnation. Many smokers want to stop smoking tobacco, and with the onslaught of advertising from e-cigarette manufacturers they may believe that they have found the perfect solution. Many teenagers, some of whom have never smoked, have also taken to using e-cigarettes. Some e-cigarettes are designed to look like conventional tobacco cigarettes and can be purchased in flavors that are appealing to teenagers.
Those who live in tropical areas around the world are at risk for malaria. In fact, malaria is a top cause of infant mortality in some countries. Numerous advances have been made to curb the instances of malaria, and medical devices have also been developed to detect malaria in underdeveloped countries. However, a new study at the Bloomberg School of Public Health suggests a far simpler solution. The researchers propose that a timely increase in vitamin A intake may decrease the chances of being infected.
Southern Nevada residents may have caught wind of a toxic rock.
Our bodies can can often heal themselves from injuries such as cuts, but is it possible to regrow parts of our brain after damage?
Going blind is terrifying. Finding out there’s nothing that can be done to help you is even worse. This is what millions of people face each year when they are diagnosed with age-related macular degeneration, or AMD. However, there soon may be a new treatment option: drugs that are already being used to treat HIV.
Walking on a frozen road in the middle of winter requires intense concentration. One misstep and you can end up face down on the ground. Even though most of us have fallen at least once from slipping or otherwise losing our balance, we’ve had many more times when we recovered and stayed upright. How did we manage to maintain our position?
Since August 2014, the two technology giants Microsoft and Samsung have been battling it out in court over unpaid royalties. However, on Feb. 10 they announced that they had come to an agreement and that the dispute was over.
Bedbugs are here to stay, and thanks to evolution, they are getting stronger every day. When Charles Darwin wrote his classic The Origin of the Species, little did he know that his landmark theory would be applicable in 2015 to the lowly bedbug.
With each new piece of information or sensory experiences, our dynamic and malleable brain alters its connections which leads to long-lasting changes in neural pathways. While the misconception of the inert brain has mostly subsided, the underlying molecular mechanisms resulting in structural changes in neurons are still under much scrutiny in neuroscience.
Popular culture and media have long toyed with how humans might wrestle with knowing the exact date they were going to die.
2014 saw the deadliest and most widespread Ebola epidemic in history. It was the first to occur in West Africa as well as the first and only Ebola outbreak ever to reach epidemic proportions. The epidemic began in Guinea in December 2013 and soon spread to neighboring Liberia and Sierra Leone, as well as to other West African nations. As of Feb. 3, a total of 9,019 deaths due to this epidemic of Ebola have occurred with Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia bearing the overwhelming majority of the disease’s burden.
Clotho, one of the three Fates in Ancient Greek mythology, was accorded the responsibility of spinning the threads of human lives. She was tasked with controlling not only the birth of each individual, but also the timing of each individual’s death. Named after this Greek spinner of life, the klotho protein, which was discovered in 1997, has been associated with longevity. Recently, a variant of the KLOTHO gene that codes for the klotho protein was linked to better cognitive abilities in humans.
The next time you lay out on the Beach studying and an inquisitive bee comes along, thank him. Why? Because our health and the health of people worldwide depend on this creature that weighs one-tenth of a gram. Scientists have recently linked human health in a new way to the important role that bees play in pollination of agricultural crops.
