Anthropologists have long speculated about why neanderthals while Homo sapiens thrived? Was it some sort of plague specific only to Neanderthals? A cataclysmic event in their homelands?
A new paper in Anatomical Record posits that it was not some exotic pathogen, but chronic ear infections and plain old evolution. Ear infections are common in kids but how serious they are is a matter of debate. In parts of culture worried about both modern medicine antibiotic resistance, some parents believe an ear infection should just rest while a lot of older people with poor hearing believe kids should get them fixed. But killing off a species?
Though age is the big risk factor for Alzheimer's disease, an analysis of Swedish twins has led some to believe that half of individual differences in Alzheimer's disease risk may be environmental.
Chemists, toxicologists, and biologists note that we would have gone extinct long ago if our bodies had not been able to absorb, metabolize, ignore, or excrete trace substances but since 2005, when a new salvo against public trust in the modern world was opened, there has been talk that an "exposome" can cause all kinds of diseases.
Environmental Working Group, the trial lawyer organization that claims modern pesticides are killing us but the old kinds labeled as "Organic"(™) create healthier families, has a new conspiracy tale out, this time that a "chemical cocktail" in plain old drinking water
is causing 100,000 cases of cancer per year.
While
USA Today (they'll blame Trump) and
New York Times (they'll blame scientists) are sure to cover it, you don't need to be concerned. Like everything EWG does, this is manufactured hype.
Our present moment is characterized by a growing obsession with the long term. The study of climate change, for example, relies on increasingly long-range simulations. Science’s predictions are no longer merely hypotheses for validation or invalidation but are often grave threats – of growing scope and severity – that must be prevented.
Eight years ago I wrote about how environmental lobbyists working for environmental lawyer groups kept the federal government in such a tail-chasing frenzy nothing could ever really get accomplished.
My frustration was over the Paiute cutthroat trout, a rare High Sierra fish that everyone agreed needed help. The government agreed, sportsmen agreed, the courts agreed, environmentalists agreed, but then it was environmentalists preventing it from happening.
Though there is far less economic inequality in America than at any point in history - poor people in America live in more square footage per person than the middle class in France, not to mention the low cost of food, TVs, and cell phones - there is a longing in some quarters to reduce it at the fringes. There are complaints, for example, that the .00001 running companies make high multiples of what the average employee gets.
An alarming number of young, white, poor men who abuse recreational opioids are developing infections of either the heart's inner lining or valves, known as infective endocarditis This new trend predominantly affects men who also have higher rates of HIV, hepatitis C and alcohol abuse, according to new research published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
Infective endocarditis occurs when bacteria or fungi in the blood stream enter the heart's inner lining or valves. Nearly 34,000 people receive treatment for this condition each year, of which approximately 20% die. One of the major risk factors for infective endocarditis is drug abuse.
Beta blockers are drugs primarily for treating high blood pressure and arrhythmias. They work blocking a hormone known as epinephrine, better known as adrenaline - the same hormone that floods our bodies during times of anxiety and stress.
That’s why beta blockers are becoming popular off-label for anxiety.
Anxiety is not what it used to be. You are not worried about being eaten by a tiger or sacked by Mongol hordes, you are maybe unhappy in your marriage or don't feel appreciated at work. Pills to the rescue, if you are in a wealthy country like America.
So some doctors are recommending them for patients to take in specific instances, rather than general use like antidepressants or benzodiazepines.
Biogenic volatile organic compounds produced by the cannabis plants during growth and reproduction, the same chemicals responsible for the pungent smell of a cannabis plant, also contribute to air pollution on a much larger scale, according to new research.
Cuticular structure in a Late Maastrichtian crab,
Costacopluma mexicana, from deposits near the town of from near Paredón, Ramos Arizpe in what is now southern Coahuila (formerly Coahuila de Zaragoza), north-eastern Mexico. We see this same species in the Upper Cretaceous Moyenne of Northeast Morocco and from the Pacific slope, Paleocene of California, USA. This beauty is in the collection of José F. Ventura.
