Science & the Public
Where scienceand society meet
- Health & Medicine
Walnuts slow prostate cancer growth
A new study suggests that mice with prostate tumors should say “nuts to cancer.” Paul Davis of the University of California, Davis, hopes follow-up data by his team and others will one day justify men saying the same.
By Janet Raloff - Chemistry
The skinny on indoor ozone
Indoor concentrations of ozone tend to be far lower than those outside, largely because much gets destroyed as molecules of the respiratory irritant collide with surfaces and undergo transformative chemical reactions. New research identifies a hitherto ignored surface that apparently plays a major role in quashing indoor ozone: It’s human skin. And while removing ozone from indoor air should be good, what takes its place may not be, data indicate.
By Janet Raloff - Chemistry
BPA found beached and at sea
Food chemists have been showing for years that bisphenol A, an estrogen-mimicking building block of polycarbonate plastics and food-can coatings, can leach into food and drinks. But other materials contain BPA – and leach it – such as certain resins used in nautical paint. And Katsuhiko Saido suspects those paints explain the high concentrations of BPA that he’s just found in beach sand and coastal seawater around the world.
By Janet Raloff - Plants
Bees face ‘unprecedented’ pesticide exposures at home and afield
Honey bees are being hammered by some mysterious environmental plaque that has a name — colony collapse disorder – but no established cause. A two-year study now provides evidence indicting one likely group of suspects: pesticides. It found “unprecedented levels” of mite-killing chemicals and crop pesticides in hives across the United States and parts of Canada.
By Janet Raloff - Health & Medicine
Vitamin D is a flu fighter
Japanese researchers offer tangible support for that idea that vitamin D deficiency might render people vulnerable to infections. Supplementing school children with the vitamin, they showed, dramatically cut their incidence of seasonal flu.
By Janet Raloff - Health & Medicine
Cats attracted to ADHD drug, a feline poison
Since 2004, drugs designed for use by people have been the leading source of poisonings among companion animals, according to the national Animal Poison Control Center in Urbana, Ill. And among cats, Adderall – a combination of mixed amphetamine salts used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder – has quickly risen to become one of the most common and dangerous of these pharmaceutical threats.
By Janet Raloff - Health & Medicine
For a lucky few, ‘dioxins’ might be heart healthy
Dioxins and their kin are notorious poisons. They work by turning on what many biologists had long assumed was a vestigial receptor with no natural beneficial role. But it now appears that in a small proportion of people, this receptor may confer heart benefits.
By Janet Raloff - Climate
National academies to review IPCC procedures
Global science organizations asked to help evaluate processes that produced 2007 climate report.
By Janet Raloff - Health & Medicine
Scientists offer compelling images of Gulf War illness
BLOG: Researchers have just rolled out a host of brain images — various types of magnetic resonance scans and brain-wave measurements — that they say graphically and unambiguously depict Gulf War Syndrome.
By Janet Raloff - Earth
Green-ish pesticides bee-devil honey makers
Pesticides are agents designed to rid targeted portions of the human environment of undesirable critters – such as boll weevils, roaches or carpenter ants. They’re not supposed to harm beneficials. Like bees. Yet a new study from China finds that two widely used pyrethroid pesticides – chemicals that are rather “green” as bug killers go – can significantly impair the pollinators’ reproduction.
By Janet Raloff - Earth
Fowl surprise! Methylmercury improves hatching rate
A pinch of methylmercury is just ducky for mallard reproduction, according to a new federal study. The findings are counterintuitive, since methylmercury is ordinarily a potent neurotoxic pollutant.
By Janet Raloff - Agriculture
Frogs: Clues to how weed killer may feminize males
Atrazine, a widely used agricultural herbicide, not only can alter hormone levels in the developing frogs, but also perturb their physical development — and lead to an excess number of females, researchers report. Their new findings may help explain observations reported by a number of other research groups that at least in frogs, fairly low concentrations of atrazine can induce a feminization — or demasculinization.
By Janet Raloff