Water makes up about 60% of your body weight. Whether you like it plain, flavored, bubbly, or in beverages or food, we all need water daily to avoid dehydration and stay healthy. For communities in need of clean drinking water, new research using bacteria may offer a simplified, lower-cost method for boosting potable water supplies.
While at work, you notice your gloves changing color, and you know immediately that you've come in contact with dangerous chemicals. Bandages on a patient signal the presence of unseen, drug-resistant microbes. These are ideas that might have once seemed futuristic but are becoming a reality as researchers move forward with technology to use living bacteria in cloth to detect pathogens, pollutants, and particulates that endanger our lives.
Pertussis, or whooping cough, is a highly contagious disease that can be life-threatening for young children. New research backs a recommendation that all pregnant women receive a pertussis booster with each pregnancy, as it can help their infants fight off the infection.
As summer mosquito season approaches, researchers are warning people with previous exposure to West Nile virus to take extra precautions against Zika. A new study found that animals with antibodies to West Nile in their blood have more dangerous infections with Zika than they would normally.
Our quest to find novel compounds in nature that we can use against human diseases —a process called bioprospecting — has led a research team to a small frog found in India. From the skin slime of the colorful Hydrophylax bahuvistara, researchers reported finding a peptide — a small piece of protein — that can destroy many strains of human flu and can even protect mice against the flu.
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.
Two viral liver diseases could help us find the path toward the cause of Parkinson's disease. Researchers from the University of Oxford and UCL Institute of Neurology in London have reported an association between hepatitis B and C infections and an increased risk of Parkinson's disease. Their findings were published early online in the journal Neurology.
To keep fungal pathogens at bay in their crowded homes, wood ants mix potions to create powerful protection for their nest and their young.
The Great Barrier Reef in Australia is the largest living system on the planet. Yet more than 90% of the reef is bleaching because of the loss of a tiny algae that lives within the coral.
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.
Have you ever had the stomach flu, aka the 24-hour flu? Well, chances are high that you never had influenza, but an intestinal infection called gastroenteritis.
Over 6,500 waterfowl—mostly ducks—have died in Canyon County, Idaho, stricken by avian cholera. The outbreak started in February, and before it's over, it may not only be Idaho's largest outbreak, but one of the largest in the country.
This month, Iowa issued their first hepatitis C virus epidemiological profile and the news was not good. The number of cases of hepatitis C reported in Iowa between 2000 and 2015 rose nearly threefold, from 754 cases in 2000 to 2,235 cases in 2015.
A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, but one annoying invasive weed may hold the answer to treating the superbug MRSA. Researchers from Emory University have found that the red berries of the Brazilian peppertree contain a compound that turns off a gene vital to the drug-resistance process.
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.
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?
The pathogen referred to as a "nightmare bacteria" is quietly adapting and spreading faster than anticipated.
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.
Where in the world did it come from? All of a sudden, one day, someone had an infection with flesh-eating bacteria. It captured headlines and worldwide attention because it was such a severe, strange, uncontrollable, and really disgusting condition.
Disengagement report numbers for self-driving car testing in 2016 on public roads in California were just released, and the biggest point we can make about them is that Waymo is very far ahead of their competitors in almost every metric.
Lighthouses and signal fires may have been the first social media. Without the ability to share language, a distant light meant "humans here." A new study from the University of California, San Diego, finds that bacteria can also send out a universal sign to attract the attention of their own, and other bacterial species.
We all know you are what you eat—or so the expression goes—but it's good to remember that what you are (at least intestinally) is mainly bacteria. A new study has shown that what you eat, and how your gut microbiome reacts to that food, might be a key player in your risk of developing a certain type of colon cancer—and changing your diet can help decrease your risk.
Despite the availability of a vaccine against it, almost 50% of men aged 18-59 in the US are infected with the human papillomavirus (HPV). Why?
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.
Specialized cells in the lining of the gut may provide a key to preventing an infectious brain disease caused by misfolded proteins.
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.
Locking individual apps on your Android device gives you an added layer of security by safeguarding app data from unwanted attention. I personally prefer using an app locker over a standard lock screen because my kids play with my phone, and they've completely disabled it after inputting the wrong PIN. So app lockers give me the right balance between giving my children access to my device, and the security of locking down my data from would-be intruders.
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.
Findings from a mouse study suggest that the Zika virus infection may have serious reproductive consequences for men.
New weapons are needed to combat antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Instead of drugs, scientists have discovered in an animal study that they may be able to harness vampire bacteria to vanquish pneumonia.
With the height of the flu season ahead, there are some good reasons to keep a flu vaccination in mind.
It seems like a new, dangerous Android exploit is uncovered every month or two. The latest headliners are NightMonkey and Chronos from the list of CIA hacks reported by Wikileaks, which have been billed as gaping security holes in the world's biggest mobile operating system.
With folks drawing lines in the sand before the upcoming election this November, it's important to know where you stand on some of the most important issues: the economy, foreign affairs, domestic affairs, and apples—caramel or candy apples, that is.
Where you lead, Gilmore Girls, I will follow. My lifelong dream to grow up Gilmore was to blame for how I ended up waiting in line outside a Williamsburg coffee shop at 6:30 a.m. on a random Wednesday morning. If I was going to start my day like a Lorelai, I needed to live my caffeine-addicted truth with a (free) cup of the good stuff from Luke's Diner.
Wheat toast. White toast. Sweet potato toast. Okay, one of these things is not like the others... Don't Miss:
I'm sure I'm not the only one on here that has googled "Why am I always tired?"... and I'm definitely not alone when I say that all of the advice I've found so far is useless:
Apple just unveiled the new iPhone 7 and 7 Plus at their September event, which means we're inching closer to traffic jams, parking lot fights, and day-long lines at Apple Stores, as well as those inevitable, dreaded words: "sold out."
LG announced their latest high-end device on September 6 and its specs are pretty amazing: The new V20 sports three cameras, two displays, three microphones, four DACs for high-end sound, and it's all powered by a removable battery.
If you could save the world by eating a burger, would you? Two companies, Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, are on a mission to redefine veggie burgers and eliminate all of the downsides of animal farming on our planet. With over five years of research and product testing, they've finally figured out how to make a plant-based burger look, feel, and taste just like real meat.
You never know when the mood for a party will hit, and lazy summer days are perfect for hosting impromptu gatherings in the backyard. That's why it's always important to be prepared with plenty of drinks, cool snacks, and ingredients for crowd-pleasing appetizers.
