Time for another hideous chemistry lesson. No one requested a tutorial on this interesting metal. But guess what -- you got one anyhow! Palladium, named after a Greek goddess and worth more than gold, also keeps our air clean. There's plenty of interesting stuff you'll learn here (if you can stand to read this).
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A group of researchers studying drinks seeks a genetic source of our taste. And one important questions emerges: Are some people genetically wired to drink bitter or sweet beverages more often?
Jimmy Carter is reportedly doing well, recovering from surgery for a broken hip sustained after the 94-year-old former president fell at his home. With falls among the top five leading causes of preventable death, context is paramount.
It's time to take a look at the newest gold rush. The one not related to sustainable energy, but to the cannabinoids: THC and CBD.
You don't need to purchase an air purifier for your house. You have a built-in air purifier called the respiratory system.
As it turns out, not a whole lot! There's only one nutritional difference between them: the kosher variety has no added iodide.
A new study suggests that teaching hospitals -- our centers of academic medical excellence -- are no more expensive to patients than your local community hospital. While we may quibble about the numbers, one thing is clear: the cost of hospitalization is only a little more transparent than the cost of medications. Do we see a pattern?
Harvard's Chris Gerry, Ph.D. has previously written about Zolgensma, the world's most expensive drug, and some of the economics behinds its price. Is Zolgensma, the only treatment for spinal muscular atrophy, too expensive, a bargain, or somewhere in between? As Oscar Wilde once said, “the truth is rarely pure and never simple.”
The truth is that sugar is just sugar. Neither good nor bad, but simply another dietary component that can be consumed in moderation without guilt or worry.
This concoction is a brew made by smooshing fresh coffee in a blender with grass-fed, unsalted butter and oil. It was invented by Silicon Valley entrepreneur Dave Asprey, who created the recipe after feeling energized from drinking tea with yak butter (seriously) while meditating in Nepal. Is Bulletproof just a bunch of bull? Angela Dowden, an award-winning nutrition and health writer, isn't terribly impressed.
Does prediabetes lead inevitably to diabetes? Not for most people. It may be a better reflection of an intersection than a foregone path.
Older people often take many supplements, including ones purported to help with brain health. A recent study says the supplements do not work.
Can a Livestock Revolution -- like Norman Borlaug's Green Revolution -- bring technological improvements to increase meat production in an environmentally responsible way? The Breakthrough Institute's whitepaper votes in the affirmative.
While the federal courts weigh whether CVS-Aetna's merger is anti-competitive, in terms of drug pricing, they are seemingly ignoring CVS's new HealthHubs. A product of the data synergy of a pharmacy and health insurer, those hubs will disrupt healthcare in ways that will shift profits to themselves and costs to society at large. Just they way Big Tobacco or Big Oil did.
For the uninitiated, "Bringing Up Bébé" was an international bestseller written by Pamela Druckerman, an American living in Paris. She quickly noticed how French children behaved very differently from her own. So, she started researching French culture and discovered an entirely different parenting philosophy. Unlike parenting fads that come and go, this book will always be relevant.
Why do patients seek a second opinion? Even when making an "evidence-based" decision, our unconscious bias towards one option or another alters how we judge the evidence -- and how long we search.
For those of us distracted by our phones, there's a new app to help us focus. Should we be surprised? No. A proof of concept study has the details.
Binge watching as an African American is detrimental to your health. (But the same can be said for every racial group.) Is there something unique about their physiology that puts them at greater risk? Or is this just a chance to publish what we already know, cloaked in a legitimate concern about disparities in research and outcomes?
Opioid hysteria is not confined to the U.S. or Canada. A British group writing for the BBC manages to get all the usual stuff -- and then some -- wrong. So here's a deal: We keep baseball, they keep cricket, and we both stop writing idiotic, misleading papers on the phony "opioid crisis." Jolly good idea if you ask us!
Imagine you’re a firefighter trying to prevent a house from burning to the ground. After many hours of hard work you’ve rescued the family, saved their pet chinchilla and extinguished every visible ember — a job well done. Wouldn’t it be strange if the blaze came roaring back the following day?
This issue is a flashpoint today in America, and these shootings are frequently reported with benchmarks demonstrating disparity. But which benchmarks are the most valid? And are they the best -- or only -- way to characterize the problem? A new study takes a different approach.
It's mosquito season in the Northeast, following a very wet spring. Which means there are going to be (1) a whole bunch of mosquitoes, and (2) a whole bunch of people arguing about whether to spray them or not. The goal here is to examine the toxicology of Sumithrin -- the active ingredient in the commonly-used insecticide Anvil -- and come up with a realistic picture of whether it's a deadly poison, a non-toxic chemical ... or something in between.
U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams celebrated Independence Day by trumpeting a study which concluded that Tylenol worked as well as morphine for controlling the pain from a broken rib. But the study was complete nonsense. ACSH caught him and now he's backpedaling like the woman in the bicycle scene from The Wizard of Oz (played backward of course).
Can a predictive algorithm or electronic messaging improve outcomes for patients with acute kidney injuries? Potentially, yes. But practically, not yet.
Can diseases be treated by modifying the genes of people with genetically-based disorders? Dr. Chris Gerry discusses CRISPR, a technology that edits the DNA in the human body. It has worked in a small number of cases. Does this mean that we have an immediate revolution in medicine on our hands? Or will it be just an esoteric experiment that will fail to live up to expectations? Maybe some of both.
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