A Texas nurse is on trial this week for reporting a doctor whose practices she believed endangered patients. As Kevin Sack of the New York Times reports, last year Anne Mitchell submitted a report expressing her concerns about Dr. Rolando G. Arafiles Jr.’s prescription and surgical procedures—including sewing a rubber tip onto a
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Dietary silicon can help maintain bone strength and keep connective tissues in good shape, and is found in grains such as oats and barley—which also happen to be key ingredients to brewing beer. Previous studies suggest that, as a rich source of silicon, beer, in moderate amounts, might help fight the bone degradation of conditions
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A moving public service announcement from the Sussex Safer Roads Partnership in the U.K. has quickly become a viral phenomenon—with views in at least 89 countries and a Facebook group of 1,500 members and counting. The “Embrace Life” ad was launched on January 20, and added to YouTube on January 29, where it’s since been seen nearly
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Women who give birth after age 40 face a higher risk of having an autistic child, regardless of the father’s age, according to a comprehensive study of all births in the state of California in the 1990s. Researchers from the University of California, Davis, found that a woman who gave birth after age 40 was 50% more likely to have an
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Generally speaking, past research has shown that children who are highly sensitive to stress tend to be at higher risk for health and behavioral problems compared with their less delicate peers. Yet, a new study finds that sensitivity in of itself may not necessarily be what primes children for struggles. According to new research
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Though sperm are generally considered pretty wriggly little guys, before they are launched into action, so to speak, they aren’t racing around. While researchers have long known that what gets them swimming is a change in internal pH level—the more alkaline their pH, the more aggressively they swim—until now, the mechanism by which
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According to a report from a Fort Worth, Texas newspaper, a previously healthy 26-year-old woman may now be permanently handicapped because long-term exposure to zinc in denture cream eroded her health. At age 26, Elizabeth Gilley, was rushed to the hospital after her unexpected symptoms—numbness in her feet and legs, labored
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Some 40% of cancers could be prevented with simple lifestyle changes and higher levels of protection from cancer-causing infections, according to experts at the International Union Against Cancer (UICC). Cancer-causing infections are responsible for 22% of deaths in the developing world, and 6% of deaths in the developed world, according
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Using a newly developed brain scan technique, researchers in the U.K. and Belgium revealed that some patients in vegetative states or states of minimal consciousness show signs of awareness, and in one exceptional case, could even answer yes/no questions posed by doctors during a visualization exercise. The findings, published online
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Writer Ariel Gore was dismayed by what she viewed as overly narrow conclusions about women’s happiness from studies in the growing field of Positive Psychology—were women truly happiest when scrubbing floors and baking cookies, as some studies seemed to suggest? Were findings about nuns’ positive attitudes helping them live longer
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Twelve years ago, the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet published a study indicating a link between the mumps, measles and rubella vaccine (MMR) and autism. The finding validated the fears of a growing subculture suspicious of vaccines, and played a role in the significant decrease in vaccination rates—in the U.K., for
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Fueling the debate over the existence of internet addiction, and new study from researchers at the University of Leeds finds that people who compulsively browse, chat and play online have higher rates of moderate to severe depression than people who aren’t compulsively driven to use the internet. Additionally, people with addictive
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Abnormal serotonin receptors, which may cause serotonin levels to dip dangerously and undermine a brain network responsible for regulating the body’s autonomic functions, could be a cause of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), according to new research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. An estimated two out of
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