The anti-vaccination culture is making headway. CDC has reported 17 outbreaks and 222 measles cases from 211, mostly in unvaccinated people - the highest since 1996.

To identify areas of under-vaccination for measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases, state and local health departments monitor compliance with school immunization requirements using annual school vaccination assessment reports, supported as a CDC immunization funding objective for the 64 grantees, including the 50 states, the District of Columbia (DC), five cities, and eight other reporting areas. CDC also monitors progress toward meeting Healthy People 2020 objectives  for the vaccination of children entering kindergarten.

Despite extensive regulations and preventative efforts, lead poisoning, which can damage the brain, kidneys, and nervous and reproductive systems, still occurs in the United States.  Babies are also at risk. Fetal exposure to lead can adversely affect neurodevelopment, decrease fetal growth, and increase the risk for premature birth and miscarriage. 

21% of adults in the United States have at least one tattoo, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and on occasion outbreaks of nontuberculous mycobacterial (NTM) skin infections have been reported after tattooing.

In January 2012, public health officials in New York received reports of Mycobacterium chelonae skin infections in 14 New York residents who received tattoos during September–December 2011. All infections were associated with use of the same nationally distributed, pre-diluted gray ink manufactured by "company A". 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/royluck/with/6134108264/

"Man, know thyself" was the challenge of ancient Greek philosophers and it has been the goal of mankind since.

Thousands of years later, neuroscientists are trying to decipher how the human brain constructs our sense of self, with mixed results. Pretty pictures mapped to activity can only tell us so much. But if self-awareness is defined as being aware of oneself, including traits, feelings, and behaviors, there are three brain regions critical for self-awareness, they say: the insular cortex, the anterior cingulate cortex and the medial prefrontal cortex.

In a long-term marriage,  men tend to drink less than they did while single. That's good.  But women drink more, say sociologists. 

Everybody seems to be talking about this new would-be particle, allegedly observed in diphoton decays in this paper by Kh. Abraamyan et al. at JINR, and consistent with an earlier claim of two physicists (van Beveren and Rupp) who had considered several distributions published by different collaborations.

Americans learned this week that the leader of the free world likes to brew his own “superb” beer. The Washington Post reported that President Obama likes microbrews “so much so that he bought a beer-making kit (with personal funds) for the White House.”

Now the White House can take the next step and slash its electricity bill, too.

The recent discoveries that α-Synuclein(α-Syn), a central player in Parkinson´s disease (PD) brain destruction, can not only pass from one neuron to another but also exist outside neuronal cells, has led to a rethink of the disease. A study investigating α-Syn effects out of the cell has found that the protein can interfere with the normal functioning of the hippocampus, the brain area for memory and learning, what might start explaining the cognitive and memory problems seen in so many PD patients. 

A recent, fascinating recent study is Decoding Animal Languages, by Con Slobodchikoff.  At one level, it is an inspiring demonstration of how new technologies can liberate us from preconceptions and open new avenues of empathy, helping humans to understand the other species who co-inhabit this planet with us.