Scientific American - Health
Science news and technology updates from Scientific American
Orange Rinds May Help Rid Cows of E. Coli
Sun, 05 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST
Name : Todd Callaway [More]
Anthrax Toxicity Depends on Human Genetics
Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:06:00 EST
Anthrax courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Marcus007
The white powder that arrived in envelopes addressed to lawmakers and journalists in 2001 proved to be a deadly delivery for several people. The lethal substance spores commonly known as Anthrax (from the bacterium Bactillus anthracis ) can cause a toxic reaction in a host’s blood stream , killing cells and leading to tissue damage, bleeding and death.
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Gonorrhea Could Join Growing List of Untreatable Diseases
Wed, 08 Feb 2012 17:10:00 EST
Gonorrhea under a microscope. Image: courtesy of CDC/Susan Lindsley
The arms race between humanity and disease-causing bacteria is drawing to a close and the bacteria are winning. The latest evidence: gonorrhea is becoming resistant to all standard antibiotic treatment.
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The Brain is one Awesomely Complicated Piece of Meat
Mon, 06 Feb 2012 23:29:00 EST
Image of the Week #29, February 6th, 2012:
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Baby-Led Weaning Leads to Leaner Kids
Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:30:00 EST
Image courtesy of iStockphoto/lisegagne
Those little pursed lips and that tiny crinkled nose might not just mean that your baby isn’t a fan of pureed peas or mashed sweet potatoes. Some of the refusals to all of those “here-comes-the-airplane” attempts to feed a weaning infant might also be the child s way of saying that she or he is just not hungry.
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#SciAmBlogs Monday - Coelacanths, Lake Vostok, neuronal transplants, #scio12, San Diego Demonoid, and more....
Tue, 07 Feb 2012 00:10:00 EST
Welcome back from the weekend. Check out the new Image of the Week first! Then see what the bloggers have published lately:
- Lucas Brouwers – Coelacanths are not living fossils. Like the rest of us, they evolve
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Sticky bacteria and the benefits of staying still
Tue, 07 Feb 2012 04:19:00 EST
I’ve written before about the many ways that bacteria can move around. Considering that they’re just one cell long, micro-organisms have a whole range of ways to travel through their little world. Movement is useful for finding food and for changing your environment when all nearby resources have been exhausted. For bacteria that can’t move, however, or that don’t want to move, there is a second option; they can park themselves on a nearby surface and settle down to wait.
There are several advantages to this. For a start, other things like food and nutrients tend to accumulate at surfaces as well, bringing the bacteria a regular supply of food. A surface is a more stable environment, the bacteria that adhere to your teeth do so because to get swept away into the stomach is to be pulled down into a very literal lake of acid. For bacteria that form biofilms , sticking to a surface is the first stage in this process.
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Marc Garnick Answers 6 Key Questions about Prostate Cancer
Wed, 08 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST
The latest findings about the ineffectiveness of PSA testing to screen for prostate cancer has confused many men--and their loved ones. On the one hand is the seeming chance to catch cancer early. On the other hand is the growing realization that many prostate tumors grow so slowly that they will never cause a problem in an individual's lifetime.
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Can't fool me, I know you aren't you at all
Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:00:00 EST
One commenter didn’t like my take on Cotard’s last week. I ran it past a couple of friends who said they had no problems with it and I’m not an expert, just an interested researcher. Its a good chance to say if I’m wrong or you disagree please let me know. If I need to change anything I will and if you want to argue then I might, depending on my free time
Following on from Cotard s Syndrome last week I wanted to talk a little about a related condition that is equally interesting, Capgras Delusion. Where Cotard s involved the patient doubting their own existence, Capgras is a disconnection between the conscious and unconscious ability to recognize faces resulting in a feeling that the person you are looking at is not quite right . This often results in the belief that the person is in fact an impostor, which can be pretty confusing.
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Visual Cues Encourage Vegetable Consumption
Tue, 07 Feb 2012 18:48:08 EST
Americans still fall short of the recommended daily portions of fruits and vegetables. And kids are notoriously averse to veggies at the school cafeteria. So researchers tested whether visual cues of healthful foods could increase consumption at a grade school with 800 students.
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#SciAmBlogs Tuesday - fake fossils, science fashion, snakes, sticky bacteria, spider photography, parades, and more.
Tue, 07 Feb 2012 23:13:00 EST
- S.E. Gould – Sticky bacteria and the benefits of staying still
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Custom-Designed Proteins Could Counteract Chemical Weapons
Tue, 07 Feb 2012 18:00:00 EST
Custom-designed proteins made with the aid of computers could fight chemical weapons such as nerve gas and help decontaminate toxic-waste sites, scientists say.
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Brain Injury Rate 7 Times Greater among U.S. Prisoners
Sat, 04 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST
A car accident, a rough tackle, an unexpected tumble. The number of ways to bang up the brain are almost as numerous as the people who sustain these injuries. And only recently has it become clear just how damaging a seemingly minor knock can be. Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is no longer just a condition acknowledged in military personnel or football players and other professional athletes. Each year some 1.7 million civilians will suffer an injury that disrupts the function of their brains, qualifying it as a TBI.
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Let's Ban Research That Makes the Bird-Flu Virus and Other Pathogens Deadlier
Mon, 06 Feb 2012 07:24:00 EST
In my classes, I often ask my students to wrestle with what I call damned-if-you-do-or-don’t dilemmas, which offer no easy solutions. Every choice would pose certain risks and violate one valued principle or another. We often must choose what we deem to be the “least bad” option, and hope things work out. Research involving the bird-flu virus H5N1 poses an especially knotty dilemma, in which scientists’ commitment to openness and to reducing humanity’s vulnerability to potential health threats collides with broader security concerns.
The H5N1 virus normally only infects humans who come into direct contact with infected birds; so far there have been no reported cases of airborne transmission among birds and humans. Of the 583 people known to have been infected with the virus, 344 have died as a result, a mortality rate of 59 percent. To be sure, many other infected people may have recovered without coming to the attention of medical authorities. But in comparison, the infamous flu pandemic of 1918, which killed at least 50 million people worldwide, had a mortality rate of two percent.
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Fasting Might Boost Chemo's Cancer-Busting Properties
Wed, 08 Feb 2012 14:30:00 EST
Cancer treatment can be brutal for patients. Many of the tools we have-- chemotherapy , radiation--are big, blunt weapons that deal punishing blows to healthy tissues along with cancerous ones. So the hunt has been on for more and more finely targeted therapies that will attack malignant cells yet minimize damage to patients' bodies.
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Y Chromosome Can Raise Heart Disease Risk by 50 Percent
Wed, 08 Feb 2012 18:30:00 EST
Image courtesy of iStockphoto/luckyraccoon
Men tend to get coronary artery disease much earlier than do women. For some men, the reason for that might be in part because of their fathers and their father’s father according to a new study , published online Wednesday in The Lancet .
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Sight Seen: Gene Therapy Restores Vision in Both Eyes
Wed, 08 Feb 2012 14:00:00 EST
Gene therapy has markedly improved vision in both eyes in three women who were born virtually blind. The patients can now avoid obstacles even in dim light, read large print and recognize people's faces. The operation, researchers predict, should work even better in children and adolescents blinded by the same condition.
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The Great Prostate Debate: Does Screening Save Lives? (preview)
Wed, 08 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST
Last fall the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force dropped a bombshell, arguing that healthy men should stop undergoing a routine blood test as a screen for prostate cancer. An analysis of the best available evidence, it argued, had shown little or no long-term benefit from the measure--called the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test--for most men with no symptoms of the disease. Use of the screening was not saving lives. In fact, it was needlessly exposing hundreds of thousands of men who were tested and found to have prostate cancer to such common complications as impotence and urinary incontinence (from surgical removal of the prostate) and rectal bleeding (from radiation treatment). Indeed, the task force estimated that more than one million men have been treated because of PSA testing who otherwise would not have been since 1985. At least 5,000 of them died soon after treatment, and another 300,000 men suffered impotence or incontinence, or both. Instead of praise for sparing more men from suffering similar fates, however, the task force’s announcement quickly drew outrage and counterarguments from several professional medical groups, including the American Urological Association.
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#SciAmBlogs Friday - Science of Mysteries, Plan B, green cities, science-art, and more.
Fri, 03 Feb 2012 23:02:00 EST
- Jennifer Ouellette – The Science of Mysteries: Leave Us the Counterpoint
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Editor's Selections: Blood Tests for Depression, the Axolotl, Dopamine, and The Bachelor
Tue, 07 Feb 2012 11:00:00 EST
Here are my Research Blogging Editor’s Selections for this week.
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