Adding to growing evidence on the possible health risks of electronic cigarettes, a lab team at the Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System tested two products and found they damaged cells in ways that could lead to cancer. The damage occurred even with nicotine-free versions of the products.

"Our study strongly suggests that electronic cigarettes are not as safe as their marketing makes them appear to the public," wrote the researchers, who published their findings in the journal Oral Oncology.

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Nearly 1 million incidences of herpes zoster, which is also known as shingles, occur every year in the U.S., with an estimated one-third of all adults affected by age 80. Despite its prevalence, particularly between ages 50 and 59, it is still unclear why some individuals will develop shingles, and others will not. In a population-based study published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology (JACI), Mayo Clinic researchers build on their previous research from 2013, which linked asthma in childhood with an increased risk of shingles.

More than 90 percent of patients with chronic pain continue to receive prescription opioids after an overdose and are at high risk for experiencing a repeated overdose, according to an article published in Annals of Internal Medicine.

Recent race-related events in Ferguson, Baltimore, Chicago and New York City make it seem like race is a big problem in America, but in reality America seems that way because of transparency. We never need to run ad campaigns to stop racist chants at sporting events, which remain a big problem in Europe, and South America and Asia are so racist there isn't much reason to talk about it - Japan is not going to take any refugees from Syria or anywhere else.

Boston - A study led by Boston Medical Center (BMC) indicates that most patients with chronic pain who are hospitalized after a nonfatal opioid overdose continue to receive prescription opioids after the overdose and are at high risk for experiencing a repeated overdose. The findings, published online ahead of print in the Annals of Internal Medicine, highlight the challenges faced by physicians to balance the known risks with potential benefits of prescription opioids for patients with chronic pain and reinforces the importance of developing tools that will help better identify and treat patients at risk for opioid use disorders and/or overdose.

AUGUSTA, Ga. - Diabetes is the leading cause of kidney failure, and scientists have found that infusing just a small dose of a cytokine, thought to help cause that failure, can instead prevent or reverse it.

The cytokine IL-17A has long been considered a classic promoter of inflammation, which plays a major role in progression of diabetes-related kidney disease, or diabetic nephropathy, said Dr. Ganesan Ramesh, kidney pathologist at the Vascular Biology Center at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University.

An animation of satellite imagery over the course of two days shows a massive low pressure system that generated severe weather in the southwestern and central U.S. bringing snow, heavy rainfall, flooding and tornadoes. The video, created by the NASA/NOAA GOES Project at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, combined visible and infrared imagery from NOAA's GOES-East satellite.

The 30-second animation shows the movement of the massive storm system from Dec. 26 to early Dec. 28, 2015.

Dublin, Ireland, Dec. 28th, 2015 - A team of geneticists from Trinity College Dublin and archaeologists from Queen's University Belfast has sequenced the first genomes from ancient Irish humans, and the information buried within is already answering pivotal questions about the origins of Ireland's people and their culture.

The team sequenced the genome of an early farmer woman, who lived near Belfast some 5,200 years ago, and those of three men from a later period, around 4,000 years ago in the Bronze Age, after the introduction of metalworking. Their landmark results are published today in international journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA.

The specialized human ability to perceive the sound quality known as 'pitch' can no longer be listed as unique to humans. Researchers at Johns Hopkins report new behavioral evidence that marmosets, ancient monkeys, appear to use auditory cues similar to humans to distinguish between low and high notes. The discovery infers that aspects of pitch perception may have evolved more than 40 million years ago to enable vocal communication and songlike vocalizations.

A summary of the research will be published online in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Dec. 28, 2015.

Millions of trees are in peril from the drought in California but that is not the fault of climate change or even bad luck - every 20 years California has a drought as bad as what just ended. It is instead bad policy; California's water infrastructure has not been improved in a meaningful way since the 1960s and since then environmental policy has been dictated by lobbyists for activist groups, so the state can't build new reservoirs, to store water for when droughts happen, and they are forced to dump fresh water into the Pacific Ocean.

The trees aren't just in peril from politicians and environmentalists, there is also the ever-present wildfires and the destructive bark beetle.