Researchers writing in
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)
have identified natural human antibodies against the virus that causes Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), a step toward developing treatments for the newly emerging and often-fatal disease.

Currently there is no vaccine or antiviral treatment for MERS, a severe respiratory disease with a mortality rate of more than 40 percent that was first reported in Saudi Arabia in 2012.

Your steak may be costing more than you realize, according to a paper in PNAS which estimates that steaks and hamburgers are a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions.

Rising incomes in emerging economies will mean greater demands for meat so it will either become a food solely for rich elites or science improvements will make it less strenuous.

Tart cherry juice in the morning and evening may help you sleep better at night, according to a paper presented today at the
American Society of Nutrition
meeting.

Insomnia is a common health problem among older adults, impacting an estimated 23 to 34 percent of the population ages 65 and older. Insomnia – defined as trouble sleeping on average more than three nights per week – can be an annoyance for some, but long-lasting sleeplessness can seriously affect health, especially in the elderly.

Matthew Miller, M.D., Sc.D., of the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, and colleagues, writing in JAMA (doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2014.1053) analyzed data from 162,625 people (between the ages of 10 to 64 years) with depression who started antidepressant treatment with a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor at modal (the most prescribed doses on average) or at higher than modal doses from 1998 through 2010. 

Americans are caught in a contradictory cultural schism. If a girl is thin, parents feel like they need to have an intervention. But we are in a war on obese people and politicians are responding to that by banning everything that looks like it can pass the legislature. Pressure to be thin may be making girls fat - except in Europe, where impossibly attractive naked women are on public billboards.

Are Americans so fat because of too much pressure to be thin?

The idea of a smart home sounds promising enough, and a house full of automated gadgets, from light switches to appliances to heating systems, will impress your friends.

Water testing can  be a cumbersome process, with labs and delays and waiting. 

Chemical engineers from McMaster University have reduced the sophisticated chemistry required for testing water safety to a simple pill, by adapting technology found in...a breath strip. 

Want to know if a well is contaminated? Drop a pill in a vial of water and shake it. If the color changes, there's the answer. The development has the potential to dramatically boost access to quick and affordable testing around the world.

The idea occurred to team member Sana Jahanshahi-Anbuhi, a PhD student in Chemical Engineering who came across the breath strips while shopping and realized the same material used in the dissolving strips could have broader applications. 

Who had the privilege to spend eternal life next to the pharaoh?

Kids and other family members, much like today. If you can afford a tomb, that is.

In the Egyptian Valley of the Kings, excavations by Egyptologists from the University of Basel have been working on tomb KV 40, close to the city of Luxor, for three years. From the outside, only a depression in the ground indicated the presence of a subterranean tomb. Up to now, nothing was known about the layout of tomb KV 40 nor for whom it was build and who was buried there.  

If a person commits a violent criminal act, there is a higher chance that a younger sibling will follow in their footsteps than an older one, according to a new paper.

It's been common sense for centuries that violent criminal behavior runs strongly in families but why is unclear. Blame is attributed to shared environmental factors such as poverty, divorce and poor parental supervision. 
This 'social transmission' of violent behaviors suggests that environmental factors within families can be important when it comes to delinquent behavior. 

Should food that has been genetically optimized have a special label attached to it by law?

Advocates say 'yes', it is about awareness, though actual implementations and efforts from California to Vermont are not about awareness, since they have made sure to exempt numerous products - everything from restaurants to alcohol to food at a deli need not have a GMO label. If the cows that make the milk that go into Stonybrook Farms yogurt eat GMO feed, the yogurt is just as organic. 

As it should be. To science, organic and genetic modification are simply different processes. Nothing about a cow munching on genetically modified food changes the milk.