It’s one of humanity’s longest-standing questions: How long can we live? Even the Bible weighs in. But people, on the whole, seem to be natural pessimists when it comes to the answer. Time after time, experts have estimated a maximum possible life expectancy that any human population could achieve. Time after time, we’ve exceeded it. …
Why do we remember bad things? A single chemical may make all the difference
With a single well-timed injection, scientists show they can erase a bad memory from the mind of a rat.
For their remarkable finding, researchers from Brazil and Argentina gave electric shocks to rats and then tested how long the animals remembered and tried to avoid shocks in the future. The researchers showed that rats will quickly …
The best strategy for fighting flu
When it comes to pandemic flu, the best strategy for the U.S. is not to vaccinate those at highest risk of illness, but rather to vaccinate those at highest risk of transmission. That’s the best way to protect the country’s most vulnerable people, according to a new study published today in the journal Science. The theory goes: If you …
What do U.S. healthcare professionals earn?
As the heated debate over health care continues, there has been plenty of talk about how the U.S. system stacks up to that of other countries, and how much American doctors earn compared with M.D.s in other parts of the world. But, how do salaries compare across the spectrum of jobs within the U.S. health care system? TIME turned to the
…
Do fancy running shoes do more harm than good?
If you’re a runner, odds are pretty good that you’ve been injured at some point in the last year or two. Journalist Christopher McDougall has an interesting and no doubt controversial explanation. It’s your shoes, he says. There’s too much of them: too much cushioning, too much arch support, too much stabilization, too much …
Smokers’ tongues less sensitive to taste
Adding to research that shows smoking can dull your sense of taste, a group of Greek ear, nose and throat specialists and physiologists recently conducted a study of 62 male soldiers—34 of whom were non-smokers, and 28 smokers—measuring their sense of taste using a technique called electrogustometry. The method entails administering
…
When Does Social Drinking Become ‘At-Risk’ Drinking?
A recent study from Duke University found that a significant portion of baby boomers—22% of men and 9% of women ages 50 and up—were binge drinking on a regular basis, increasing their risk for both long term health problems such as neurological complications and elevated blood pressure, and more acute problems like accidental injury.
Suicidal thoughts among Asian American women
A study of suicidal thoughts and behaviors in the Asian American community reveals that U.S.-born women of Asian descent have alarmingly high rates of suicidal ideation—thoughts of suicide—compared with the general U.S. population. Nationally, an average of 13.5% of people will contemplate suicide in their lifetime, among Asian
…
A controversial — some say better — way to treat heroin addiction: Let addicts keep using
Long-time heroin addicts who get supervised doses of the drug seem to stay in addiction treatment longer and have less criminal activity than similar addicts who get conventional methadone treatment. That’s the finding of a randomized controlled trial published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine. Researchers from two …
The chemicals in candles
Burning everyday paraffin-wax candles can emit a storm of toxic chemicals, including toluene and benzene, according to a study presented today to the American Chemical Society. To be sure, it’s nowhere near as harmful to light an occasional candle as it would be, say, to smoke a pack of cigarettes a day. But the researchers say that …
What causes tone-deafness?
A new study from researchers at Beth Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School suggests that tone-deafness may be the result of a missing neural connection. By using a brain imaging technique that allows them to examine the links between the right temporal and frontal lobes, the scientists compared the neural connectivity of 10
…
Phone calls help cancer patients feel better
When nurses reach out to their cancer patients by phone, those patients on average report higher quality of life and better mood, even if their symptoms are no better than other patients’. The finding comes from a new report published in today’s Journal of the American Medical Association. New Hampshire researchers tested a simple …
A patch to take the ouch out of shots
What if, instead of having to brave a hypodermic needle each time you needed a shot, you could simply slap on a patch and go about your day? According to some preliminary research from scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University, that possibility may be just a few years off.