Humans
- Health & Medicine
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria strike drug of last resort
Warning signs emerge in the use of an old drug effective against resistant microbes.
- Health & Medicine
Your cholesterol drug might help you weather the flu
Data suggest illness is less likely to be fatal in those taking statins
- Health & Medicine
Flu shots for moms-to-be benefit babies
Study of about 4,000 pregnant women shows link between newborn health and whether mom got vaccinated
- Health & Medicine
Mice: seasonal flu vaccine and vulnerability to pandemic strain
Earlier this year, Dutch scientists showed that vaccinating mice against seasonal strains of flu rendered the animals unnecessarily vulnerable to dying if they later encountered a pandemic flu strain. Authors of this study now ask whether there are lessons in their data for parents. Such as whether to ignore recommendations that youngsters get seasonal-flu shots during years when pandemic flu is raging. Others suggest this idea, at least as regards people, is bunk.
- Humans
A health-care communication revolution
Discussing how physicians and patients can cure their misunderstandings of medical statistics.
- Health & Medicine
Psychiatric meds can bring on rapid weight gain in kids
Drugs that alleviate severe mental disorders can also result in troubling metabolic changes.
- Health & Medicine
Redefining self, phantom self
Amputees who feel phantom limbs can learn to do physically impossible body tricks
- Health & Medicine
Skin bacteria different in diabetic mice
An excessive number and low diversity of skin bacteria could explain why wounds in diabetics are slow to heal
- Science & Society
College trend: Cut-rate faculty
Among U.S. colleges and universities, tenure-track positions decreasingly represent the norm. “Adjuncts who teach part time are now about half of the professoriate,” according to a series of articles in the Oct. 23 Chronicle of Higher Education. Non-tenure-track faculty may be offered full-time slots and benefits, but with embarrassing paychecks.
- Humans
A gene critical for speech
Scientists argue a newly discovered stretch of DNA essential for larynx development may have allowed the evolution of language.
- Life
Estrogen helps ward off belly fat
Hormone is one reason that men and women carry weight differently
- Climate
Winter forecast: Sustained blizzard of climate news
At least in our area of the country, consumers are already being assaulted — well before Halloween — with Christmas music, decorations and holiday-themed goods. Reporters are smack in the throes of their own early seasonal blitz: News items carrying a climate or global-warming theme. And I don’t expect the crush of climate news and seminars to diminish until around Christmas. That’s when the next United Nations COP — or Conference of the Parties — will end this year’s pivotal round of negotiations in Copenhagen aimed at producing a new climate treaty.
