Two performance-enhancing drug scandals, one involving tennis players and the other the Russian Olympic sports complex, are seemingly unconnected. That is, until you consider how both relate to Maria Sharapova, the tennis star who's currently serving a suspension for using the banned substance, meldonium, which helps oxygen uptake and endurance.
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Sequencing a genome is quick and inexpensive, but a DNA sequence alone is not useful if we can't interpret the information that it holds. New research has developed an analysis using yeast that has the ability to determine whether a genetic mutation causes a disease. This work may help narrow the gap between having information and being able to use it to diagnose and treat patients.
Drexel University scientists have dressed their nanoparticle with tumor-fighting success, by using polyethylene glycol as an anchor for an enzyme to break down a tumor's extracellular matrix. That allows chemotherapy drugs to reach the tumor's core.
Obtaining hormonal contraceptives just became considerably easier for California females, as compared to those in 47 other states in the nation. A new law allows women and girls, irrespective of age, to get birth control materials without first having to visit a primary care physician. Instead, they can simply go to their local pharmacist.
When Wall Street Journal reporter Serena Ng decides to clean house, she doesn't kid around. After she caught the folks running Jessica Alba's (dis)Honest Company lying through their veneers about what's in its "natural" products, she wasn't done. Now her spotlight is on another ethically-challenged operation.
In an article published in Pediatrics, researchers found that an acute episode of smoking by lactating mothers altered infants’ sleep/wake patterning. This, combined with the adverse physiological effects nicotine-saturated breast milk has on babies, one would think bottle feeding would be recommended among this cohort. It's not.
Canada, like the United States, provides some dietary guidance for its citizens. And like in the U.S., not everyone north of the boarder is happy with the result, despite the fact that they're also experiencing a similar obesity epidemic. Maybe the angst stems from the "latest" Canadian Food Guide, which came out in 2007 and could use an update.
Newsweek journalist loses his mind, Mother Jones coincidentally defends them immediately
A journalist demanding that another journalist not use a science site as a source? Someone not only doesn't want us to talk about science they happen not to accept, they demand that everyone else suppress us also? If it sounds weirdly social authoritarian, yeah, it is, but unsurprising in modern corporate media.
If you're taking vitamin C, odds are that you probably have some kind of adorable, picture-perfect place in your mind about where the supplement comes from, and how it is made. Time to substitute that picture for the real thing.
Most people take for granted the notion that eating butter leads to a bad heart. As a result, many have turned to vegetable oil as a healthy cooking alternative. Yet a new study stands among many others in showing that the opposite may be true: butter, in fact, could be better for our health than vegetable oils. So, all in all, the jury is still out.
Babies begin to learn language sounds before they’re even born. In the womb, a mother’s voice is one of the most prominent sounds that's heard. And, as research scientist Naja Ferjan Ramirez writes, at birth newborns can even distinguish between their mother’s language and another.
Environmental groups really dislike the weed killer 2,4-D. So much so, that they routinely play the "let's scare the public by calling it something else" game. What are the rules? Just make sure that whenever 2,4-D is mentioned, also refer to dioxin and Agent Orange so that everyone thinks they're the same. But they aren't. Not even close.
To cope with high pollen levels during vigorous exercise should an athlete pop a couple of antihistamines? There’s no definitive answer, but new research finds that 27 percent of genes activated after vigorous exercise become blunted in their responses during a three-hour recovery period, if exercisers had taken strong doses of antihistamines.
Can where you eat determine your calorie consumption? Would a fast-food restaurant, such as McDonald's or Burger King, lead to over-consumption compared to a "fast-casual" site, like Chipotle or Panera? New research suggests the opposite.
A potential breakthrough in developing a vaccine against Clostridum difficile infections has been achieved by scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces. “C. diff” is the causative agent of a nasty diarrheal illness that has plagued healthcare facilities the world over.
Unlike draping yourself in velvet, which is not socially acceptable, silk remains perfectly fashionable. In fact, it is all the rage at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Tufts University, where a research group led by David Kaplan is literally wrapping silk around everything it can get its hands on.
P.T. Barnum was mostly correct, but he underestimated both the number of suckers, and how often they are born. Proof of this exists in the form of a company that is probably going to make a ton of money by marketing water that contains an imaginary molecule, which is supposed to turn you into Superman. It won't.
Chemistry — love it or hate it — usually has one thing going for it: It's never icky. But every rule has an exception. This is WAY beyond icky. Check this out.
Though malaria affects half the world’s population, Europe is giddy that at least it isn't touching them. No new cases were reported last year. It must feel good to be part of the epidemiological 1 percent.
The only legal difference between bourbon and rye products is their mashbill: Bourbon must be fermented from a mash that is majority corn, and rye from a majority of, yes, rye. Otherwise, the two products are identical. So it's possible for a 2 percent difference in mashbill to tip the whiskey from one category into the other.
It is hard to believe that some cancers miraculously go away for good, but it does happen. Over 1,000 case studies document cancer sufferers who experienced spontaneous regression of their tumor. So why does this happen, and is it possible to exploit it to benefit cancer patients?
Often, experienced chemists can look at the structure of a chemical and make good guess about whether it will be toxic. But "eyeball toxicology" is not foolproof. Many of us got it wrong with sucralose. We were suspicious that it might be toxic. But it isn't, and here's why.
Injuries are part and parcel of soccer. Sure enough, they do not seem to be decreasing, even though most top-level teams have embedded sports medicine into their operations. But if teams applied the same approach to the act of kicking a ball, as it does to overall skill development, rates of injury could decline significantly.
According to a new Danish study, obesity isn't as bad for health as it used to be. More exactly, the BMI associated with the lowest mortality risk seems to be higher than it was 40 years ago. But given some of the problems associated with using BMI to estimate obesity, we're not so sure that these results apply to everyone.
Every time I think that this nightmare might be over, he's back in the news. This time, the rights to the former doctor's 2010 book have recently been acquired, and I fear my nightmare is going to become a Hollywood film. Why are Wakefield's supporters so effective at getting their message out than those on the side of science? In response, what do we need to do?
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