|
|
In February, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved new criteria for the prescribing of the cholesterol-lowering drug (statin) Crestor (rosuvastatin calcium) to include people at low risk for heart attack or stroke — potentially expanding the use of the medication as a preventive regimen for millions of people who don’t struggle with high cholesterol.
How soon your performance will be rated may influence how well you do, according to a new study published in the journal Psychological Science. In the study, researchers Keri L. Kettle and Gerald Häubl from the University of Alberta set out to determine whether the timing of feedback—how soon you learn of your grade, or [...]
Growing resistance to two leading antibiotic treatments could make the sexually transmitted infection gonorrhea more difficult to treat, according to warnings from a British health official reported by the BBC. At a meeting of the Society for General Microbiology in Edinburgh, Dr. Catherine Ison, a gonorrhea specialist from the U.K.’s Health Protection Agency, warned that [...]
Adding to a growing understanding of the underlying brain functions involved in moral decision-making, a team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University—including neuroscientist Marc Hauser, author of the 2006 book Moral Minds— found that manipulating activity in a certain brain region influenced study subjects’ moral judgments. The findings, published this [...]
In a decision that could have broad ramifications for future genetic research and medical practice, United States District Court Judge Robert W. Sweet ruled Monday that patents on two genes linked to ovarian and breast cancer, BRCA-1 and BRCA-2, were invalid. The case brought by a group including the American Civil Liberties Union, the Public [...]
Exploring the hypothesis that deficits in reward processing may contribute to obesity by making it difficult for certain individuals to stop eating once their energy needs are met—either because they are prewired with faulty reward systems or because “excessive consumption of palatable food can drive reward dysfunction”—researchers from the Scripps Research Institute examined how prolonged [...]
Nearly everyone—97.5% of us—is pretty bad at multitasking behind the wheel, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Utah. Most of us get a lot more sloppy with our driving when also carrying on a phone conversation: an analysis of about 200 people asked to talk on the phone (on a [...]
According to a commentary published this week in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), despite a slight overall decrease in head and neck cancers worldwide, there has been a recent surge in one particular form of the disease—oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma—that may be due to the spread of the human papillomavirus (HPV) through oral sex. Dr. [...]
Previous research has found that people who generally have more positive emotions tend to experience a broad range of benefits—more stable marriages, better social skills and just greater happiness overall—compared with those who are more dominated by negative emotions. One measurement that researchers use when assessing emotions is smile intensity, based on the premise that [...]
