All Stories by Ben Harder
- Earth
Pollution Ups Blood Pressure: Inhaled particles linked to transient effect
In a laboratory setting, volunteers breathing pollutants generated by sources such as vehicle engines experience slight but steady increases in blood pressure.
- Health & Medicine
Cells in heart can regenerate dead tissue
Stem cells in heart tissue that has survived a heart attack can be prodded to regenerate dead portions of the injured organ.
- Chemistry
Striking Oil: High-pressure processing minimizes trans fats
Improvements in the techniques used to hydrogenate vegetable oils could soon fill store shelves with food products containing smaller percentages of unhealthful trans fats.
- Earth
Bacteria Ride the Tide: Moon’s phases predict water quality at beaches
At many ocean beaches, full and new moons coincide with the greatest concentrations of bacteria in the water.
- Health & Medicine
Stepping Off the Scale
While walking, obese people alter their gait to minimize both energy expenditure and the stress on their knee joints.
- Health & Medicine
Heart attack treatment: Better late than never
A new study contradicts the notion that heart attacks run their course in less than a day and suggests that even delayed treatment can preserve endangered heart tissue.
- Health & Medicine
A Matter of Time
Some patients are diagnosed with severe heart attacks in or near hospitals that can't offer them the best treatment, but is emergency transport to a better-equipped facility worth the delay?
- Health & Medicine
Preventing PMS: Vitamin and mineral let women avoid syndrome
Ample calcium and vitamin D in the diet prevent premenstrual syndrome in some women.
- Health & Medicine
Striking a Better Bargain with HIV
Because a drug frequently used to block the transmission of HIV from mother to infant may have negative consequences for the mothers, researchers are looking for inexpensive treatments that will benefit both mother and child.
- Earth
Farmers without Fungus: How to store peanuts to reduce toxins
African peanut farmers can more than halve their exposure to a class of harmful fungal toxins called aflatoxins by adopting several simple measures after harvest.
- Earth
Gender Measure: Pollutant appears to alter boys’ genitals
Infant boys who were exposed in the womb to modest concentrations of certain common plasticizers and solvents developed genital changes.
- Health & Medicine
Shot in the gut
A mystifying case of lead poisoning, which may have lasted more than a decade, turned out to have been caused by a swallowed shotgun pellet.
