News: Have a Dog? Be Careful of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever
Dangerous to humans and dogs, Rocky Mountain Fever, along with several other tickborne infections, is on the rise.
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News: A Common Cancer-Causing Mono Virus Has a Special Trick to Hide from the Body's Defenses
Most of us have already had an encounter with the Epstein-Barr virus, or EBV, for short. As part of the herpes family, it's one of the most common disease-causing viruses in humans. We get the disease with (or without) some nasty symptoms, then we recover. However, EBV stays in our body after the illness has ended, and it's one of the few viruses known to cause cancer.
The Good Stuff: Breastfeeding Delivers Beneficial Bacteria to Baby
Breastfeeding is the ultimate in farm-to-table dining. It is sustenance prepared just for the baby and delivered with a very personal touch. Along with bonding, breastfeeding provides powerful protection to infants and young children in the form of beneficial bacteria, hormones, vitamins, protein, sugar, and antibodies manufactured on site to support infant health.
News: Scientists Are Using Targeted Light to Help the Immune System Track Down Tumors
We fight cancer in a variety of ways, but no matter whether drugs, biologics, or our immune cells are part of the battle, they can do a better job fighting back cancer if we can help them find the tumors.
News: Taking Genetic Scissors to Infected Cells Could Cure HIV
Being infected with HIV means a lifetime of antiviral therapy. We can control the infection with those drugs, but we haven't been able to cure people by ridding the body completely of the virus. But thanks to a new study published in Molecular Therapy by scientists at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine (LKSOM) at Temple University and the University of Pittsburgh, all that may change.
News: How to Know if You Have West Nile Virus
When just floating peacefully in the water with their brood mates, the Culex mosquito larvae in the image above does not look very frightening. But in their adult form, they are the prime vector for spreading West Nile virus — a sometimes mild, sometimes fatal disease.
News: Glowing Bacteria Can Help Locate Devastating Hidden Land Mines
Devastating and deadly, land mines are a persistent threat in many areas of the world. Funding to clear regions of land mines has been decreasing, but new research may offer a less dangerous method of locating hidden, underground explosives by using glowing bacteria.
News: World Malaria Day Reminds Us That The Fight Isn't Over
The theme for 2017's World Malaria Day, which is today, April 25, is "End Malaria for Good." For many Americans, this might seem like an odd plea. Especially since Malaria is seemingly an obsolete problem here. However, on World Malaria Day, it's important to remember the danger of malaria is still very much present in the US. And around the world, the disease is at the epicenter of a global crisis.
News: Microbe That Causes Sepsis & Meningitis Has Mutated into a New Sexually Transmitted Disease
The ability of one microbe to adapt is giving it a whole new career as a sexually transmitted disease. Usually content with the back of the throat and nose of those who carry it, the dangerous pathogen Neisseria meningitidis has adapted to cause an illness that looks a lot like gonorrhea.
News: The Latest in HIV Prevention — Syringe Vending Machines in Vegas & On-Site Testing at Walgreens
It's about time people acknowledged that judging drug users would do nothing productive to help them. In the US this week, two new programs are launching that should help addicts be a little safer: Walgreens Healthcare Clinic will begin offering to test for HIV and hepatitis C next week, and Las Vegas is set to introduce clean syringe vending machines to stop infections from dirty needles.
News: 'Impossible to Identify' Website Phishing Attack Leaves Chrome & Firefox Users Vulnerable (But You Can Prevent It)
Sophisticated hackers have been exploiting vulnerabilities in Chrome and Firefox to trick even the most careful internet users into logging into fake domains for sites like Apple, Google, and Amazon.
News: Researchers Have Found Zika's Sweet Spot & Potential Key to Fetal Infections
An advance in the race to stop birth defects caused by Zika-infected mothers has been made by a team of researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. They have identified the process Zika uses to gain entry into the placenta, and published their findings in the journal Biochemistry.
Amazing Insects: Ants Create Chemical Cocktails to Brew Antibiotics
To keep fungal pathogens at bay in their crowded homes, wood ants mix potions to create powerful protection for their nest and their young.
How To: Check Your iPhone for 32-Bit Apps That Won't Work in iOS 11
Apple has removed support for older 32-bit applications in the new iOS 11, which was to be expected after the 10.3 update added the ability to detect apps that are still running 32-bit processes on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. Apple even excluded restore images for 32-bit devices such as the iPhone 5 and iPad (4th gen) in the iOS 10.3.2 beta 1 update for developers, so this shouldn't be a surprise.
News: Detailed 3D Mining Maps & Future Reclamation Views Highlighted in Proof-of-Concept HoloLens App
LOOOK, a Seattle-based mixed reality and development studio, can now peer into the future with their new geotechnical engineering visualization application for Microsoft HoloLens.
News: Hong Kong Butcher in Critical Condition with Rare Strep Brain Infection Caused by Pork
The culprit probably wasn't what doctors were expecting when a 57-year-old man in Hong Kong came to the hospital. The patient was admitted to the intensive care unit in critical condition. A clue to the cause of the infection would lie in the man's profession—he was a butcher.
News: Yellow Fever Outbreak Rears Its Ugly Head in Brazilian Cities, Killing Dozens
Yellow fever has emerged again in Brazil, causing death and disease to people unprepared for this mosquito-borne illness.
News: MRIs Spot Sneaky Dementia-Causing HIV Brain Infections, Even in Patients on Effective Treatments
In the past, infection with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) commonly led to dementia as the virus made its way to the brain. Even in effectively treated people, HIV can hide out and replicate in places like the brain, where it's tough to detect. That's why it's very concerning that half of all HIV-infected patients still report cognitive problems.
News: An Early Spring & Skyrocketing Mouse Population Converge for a Risky 2017 for Lyme Disease
For regions that experienced a boom in mouse populations last year, scientists say 2017 could see a surge in cases of Lyme disease.
News: Sponge Bacteria Clean Heavy Metals & Toxins Like Arsenic from Water, Saving Turtles & Humans Alike
Arsenic occurs naturally in the environment, but it is also one of the most commonly found heavy metals in wastewater, deposited there by inappropriate disposal and arsenical pesticides, for example.
News: Imported Seafood & Produce Bring Along a Spike in Deadly Food-Borne Outbreaks
A robust appetite for imported foods is leading to increased disease outbreak in the US. Despite the locovore and slow food movements, America's demand for foreign foods is picking up. According to a study published in the journal of Emerging Infectious Diseases, demand for imported fresh fruits, vegetables, and seafoods has jumped in recent years.
News: A New Compound Kills the Growth-Stunting Whipworm Parasite That Infects Half a Billion People
Somewhere around 600–800 million people in the world are infected with whipworm (Trichuris trichiura), an infection they got from ingesting soil or water contaminated with feces of infected animals or people containing the parasite's eggs.
News: More Than 20 Pathogens Found Lurking in Medical Marijuana—Dosing Users with (Potentially) Deadly Fungus
Marijuana is legal to use for medical purposes in 28 states and the District of Columbia, but the quick development of this new industry could have left some regulation issues in the lurch.
News: Avoid Unnecessary Childhood Surgery by Considering Antibiotics First for Uncomplicated Appendicitis
A new study confirms that antibiotics can prevent surgical intervention if your child's appendix becomes inflamed, potentially saving his or her life.
News: Punch-AR Takes a Jab at Quality Control on Construction Sites
A virtual design and construction services firm has built an augmented reality application that uses the Microsoft HoloLens to improve the efficiency of quality control on construction sites.
News: Bye Bye, French Bread & Pasta—There's a Fungal Outbreak Killing Europe's Wheat Crops
We may not fully appreciate all the important roles wheat plays in our lives until it's gone—or at least, when it's in very short supply. What would a world be like without bread, cakes, cereal, pasta, or wheat beer? If the dire warnings about an impending stem rust fungus come to pass, we may know all too soon.
How To: Tell if You Have a Cold or the Flu
Have the sniffles? Yes. Does your head hurt? Yes. Coughing? Yes. Could you have influenza? Yes. How do you know the difference? With these symptoms, you could also have a cold.
News: HIV Co-Opts the Body's First Line of Defense—Using It as a Shuttle to Take Over
A new study just out reveals that HIV takes hold in the human body with the help of cells that usually work to heal, not kill.
News: A Beach Infected with Fecal Coliform Can Ruin Your Vacation, but Seagrasses Can Save the Day
Seagrass may help your favorite beach stay a little less toxic. A new study, led by Joleah Lamb, a postdoctoral researcher in the Harvell Lab at Cornell University, found that coastal seagrasses reduce levels of pathogens dangerous to humans and marine organisms in near-shore waters.
News: Use This Type of Repellent to Avoid Mosquitoes—& Zika
Responding to the emergence of Zika in the US, researchers investigated what type of repellent works best to reduce your odds of a mosquito bite from Aedes aegypti, the mosquito species that spreads the Zika virus.
News: Bird Flu Is Circling in China Again—Here's How It Could Develop into an Outbreak
Avian flu is making the news again with new human cases in China reported in January. What does "avian flu" mean to you—and how dangerous is it?
News: New Research Shows How Flesh-Eating Leishmania Parasites Hide in Our Bodies to Fight Future Infections
Transmitted by a sandfly one-third the size of a mosquito, parasitic Leishmania protozoa are responsible for a flesh-destroying disease that kills an estimated 20,000 people per year. Two new studies offer understanding of how the parasite provides immunity through persistence and why some people suffer more virulent forms of the disease.
News: New Doggy Flu Vaccine Could Stop Outbreaks, Keep Pets Healthy
You know the signs—sneezing, fever, nagging cough, no energy, no appetite. It's the flu, but this time, it's your dog who's down and out. Yes, dogs get the flu, too. However, a team from the University of Rochester Medical Center and their collaborators have developed a new vaccine that may make the doggy flu a thing of the past.
News: Research Published in mBio Shows How Gut Bacteria Can Help Chubby Dogs Live a Better—& Longer—Life
As fun as it is to see Fido's face light up when you feed him table scraps, American dogs are getting fat. The good news is that research is homing in on nutritional strategies to boost canine capabilities to maintain a healthy weight.
News: We've Found the Back Door HIV Uses to Hide in the Brain—& It Could Help Us Take the Virus Down
Over 1.2 million people in the US are infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)—and one out of eight of them don't know it. Even after decades of intense research into the virus, there's still no cure for it. One of the big problems is that the virus hides out in certain cells of the body, resisting treatments that kill it.
News: The Root Cause of Type 1 Diabetes Could Be a Common Childhood Viral Infection
A young child becomes very thirsty very often and seems tired all the time. A visit to the pediatrician determines she has type 1 diabetes. The onset of type 1 diabetes may seem sudden, and it can be, but the disease may actually have been triggered by common childhood viruses years earlier.
News: Gut May Hold Key to Infectious Brain Diseases
Specialized cells in the lining of the gut may provide a key to preventing an infectious brain disease caused by misfolded proteins.
News: Genetically-Modified Parasites Could Save People from Malaria
You might feel the bite, you might not, but an infected mosquito has injected you with a parasite named Plasmodium falciparum, a single-cell protozoa that quickly takes up residence in your body.
News: How El Niño—& Climate Change—Kill People with Virus Epidemics
Using mathematical modeling, researchers suggest weather and warming created the "perfect storm" that drove the Zika outbreak in 2016.
How To: 3 Apps for Getting Your Budget & Finances Under Control in 2017
It's become a routine for many of us to ring in the New Year with pledges to finally get our budgets and finances under control. Unfortunately, it's also quite difficult to to keep those promises. Some of us will just dive into our resolutions and wing it as we move forward, which usually ends in failure. But even for those of us who plan carefully, obstacles along the way can spell doom for New Year's resolutions.