Neutrinos almost never interact, 10,000,000,000,000 neutrinos pass through your hand every second but fewer than one actually makes contact with any of the atoms inside us. 

When neutrinos do interact with another particle, it happens at very close distances and involves a high-momentum transfer.  Mostly. Physicists have found evidence that these tiny particles might be involved in a weird reaction, even for neutrinos. A paper in Physical Review Letters shows that neutrinos sometimes can also interact with a nucleus but leave it basically untouched - inflicting no more than a "glancing blow" - resulting in a particle being created out of a vacuum.

Humans who eat a lot of red meat are known to be at higher risk for certain cancers but other carnivores are not, which is a bit of an epidemiological puzzle, mostly because cancer rates in animals are not well-known.

In a recent study,  University of California, San Diego School of Medicine scientists wanted to  investigate the possible tumor-forming role of a sugar called Neu5Gc, which is naturally found in most mammals but not in humans, and found that feeding Neu5Gc to mice engineered to be deficient in the sugar (like humans) significantly promoted spontaneous cancers.

The study did not involve exposure to carcinogens or artificially inducing cancers, further implicating Neu5Gc as a key link between red meat consumption and cancer. 

It's commonly said that moderate alcohol consumption is good for people, but no one knew why and the determination of moderate was arbitrary.

A new study of 618 Swedes with coronary heart disease and a control group of 3,000 healthy subjects lent evidence to epidemiological curve-matching. The subjects were assigned to various categories based on the amount of alcohol they consumed and were tested in order to identify a particular genotype (CETP TaqIB) that previous studies suggested played a role in the health benefits of alcohol consumption.

The results showed that moderate consumption of alcohol helps protect people  against coronary heart disease
- if they have the genotype.

Ready-to-eat desserts such as cakes, cookies, pies, doughnuts, and pastries add a significant amount of energy, sugar, and saturated fat to Americans' diets, making them a strategic target for cultural pundits and the scholars who arm them with epidemiological papers looking to lay blame for obesity.

The enzyme signal peptide peptidase-like 3 (SPPL3) is known to 'cut' proteins - they cleave the peptide bonds in the polypeptides that make up proteins - but it turns out that it works to activate T-cells, the immune system's foot soldiers - without cutting proteins. 

Because its structure is similar to that of presenilin enzymes, which have been implicated in Alzheimer's disease, the researchers believe their findings could shed more light on presenilin functions, in addition to providing new insight into how the immune system is controlled.

Cardiovascular disease and the rather more vaguely-defined metabolic syndrome are major public health concerns throughout the developed world.

A new paper in the
European Journal of Preventive Cardiology
finds that Yoga, a popular mind-body practice, has value in improving cardio-metabolic health. The conclusion in their review of other papers makes sense. Doing any exercise for an hour a day will improve cardio-metabolic health. Yet some people are not going to get on a treadmill or go for walk so if the Eastern mysticism aspect gets their blood pumping, it can be considered as a potentially effective therapy for such conditions.

Pets play an important role in our social lives and they can act as catalysts for social interaction, previous research has shown, because pets often serve as "social lubricants."

Although much media attention has focused on how dogs can improve the social skills of children with autism, a University of Missouri researcher recently found that children with autism have stronger social skills when any kind of pet lived in the home.

Some people have the appearance of a young shape even as they age. Good genes and clean living, it is said. But the nature and nurture argument has a new companion - historical context - at least in sociology.

A new study claims evidence that the role of genetics in complex traits, including obesity, varies over time. Both the era in which scientific research is conducted and the era in which subjects were born may have an impact on the degree to which genetic factors are present in scientific data.