Health & Medicine
- Health & Medicine
Discerning pancreatic cancer from pancreatitis
New test shows patients with autoimmune pancreatitis are more likely to have a telltale antibody.
- Ecosystems
Dining: Bugged on Thanksgiving
Earlier this week, I met with Zack Lemann at the Insectarium, a roughly 18-month-old Audubon museum. He gave me a behind-the-scenes tour of its dozens of living exhibits hosting insects and more -- including tarantulas and, arriving that day for their Tuesday debut, white (non-albino) alligators. But the purpose of my noon-hour visit was to sample the local cuisine and learn details of preparations for a holiday menu that would be offered through tomorrow at the facility’s experiential cafe: Bug Appetit. There’s Thanksgiving turkey with a cornbread and wax worm stuffing, cranberry sauce with meal worms, and Cricket Pumpkin Pie. It’s cuisine most Americans would never pay for. But at the Insectarium, they don’t have to. It’s offered free as part of an educational adventure.
- Humans
Beefy hormones: New routes of exposure
On any given day, some 750,000 U.S feedlots are beefing up between 11 million and 14 million head of cattle. The vast majority of these animals will receive muscle-building steroids — hormones they will eventually excrete into the environment. But traditional notions about where those biologically active pollutants end up may need substantial revising, several new studies find.
- Life
Bone regulators moonlight in the brain as fever inducers
Study in mice suggests proteins could be source of post-menopausal hot flashes.
- Health & Medicine
Malaria shows signs of resisting best drug used to fight it
The frontline malaria medicine artemisinin shows gaps in effectiveness in Southeast Asia.
- Humans
Obese people can misjudge body size
Survey finds that many overweight individuals consider their body size normal and healthy despite having health problems
- Health & Medicine
Marathoners’ hearts stressed, but not necessarily by heart attacks
Detailed imaging of runners’ hearts before and after races doesn’t find signatures of heart attacks
- Health & Medicine
Mummies reveal heart disease plagued ancient Egyptians
CT scans of preserved individuals show hardening of arteries similar to that seen in people today.
- Health & Medicine
PCBs hike blood pressure
No one would choose to eat polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs — yet we unwittingly do. And a new study finds that the cost of their pervasive contamination of our food supply can be elevated blood pressure, a major risk factor for heart disease.
- Health & Medicine
Heart attack patients get high radiation dose
Medical imaging can add up to exposure similar to what nuclear power plant workers experience.
- Earth
Plastics ingredients could make a boy’s play less masculine
Study links boys' fetal phthalate exposure to tendency toward gender-neutral play later on.
- Health & Medicine
B vitamin outperforms another drug in keeping arteries clear
The findings led to an early halt of a small study comparing Niaspan and Zetia, two compounds commonly used along with statins to reduce heart attack risk.
