Use of performance enhancing drugs is a major problem in many competitive sports and the 2017 prohibited list includes over 300 substances. However, the scientific evidence around these substances is scarce, partly because it is impossible to do trials with professional cyclists who are subject to anti-doping regulation.

Meanwhile, media attention given to performance enhancing drugs may encourage amateurs to try them. But it is unlikely to help, according to a new paper published in The Lancet Haematology journal.

Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) is best known for use in bleach and hair treatments and is often invoked as a scary chemical by environmental groups promoting concern about food and products, but it is produced naturally in our bodies. A new study shows it is a useful chemical across nature; plants use it to control how their cells react to varying levels of light.

Like preventing plant sunburn. 

Hydrogen peroxide is a by-product of photosynthesis in parts of plant cells called chloroplasts, much like it is in our bodies by cellular respiration. Using a fluorescent protein that detects hydrogen peroxide, the researchers behind a new study in Nature Communications observed how H2O2 moves from chloroplasts and can be detected in cell nuclei. 

What will cost $400 billion, a giant leap over California’s total health care budget for 2018 of $179.5 billion, yet is not mentioned by California lawmakers? California's free "single-payer" healthcare proposal.

We're in a lifelong struggle against nature every single day, the ultimate arms race. Viruses have continually infected humans just as they do today.

Some early viruses even became integrated into our genome and are now known as human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs). Over millions of years, they became inert due to mutations or major deletions in their genetic code.

Today, one of the most studied HERV families is the HERV-K family, which has been active since the evolutionary split of humans and chimpanzees with some members perhaps actively infecting humans within the past couple hundred thousand years.

Kids are stimulated by new experiences. So are pigs. If you watched the 2014 video where a camera falls out of a plane and crashes into a pig sty you saw how intrigued they were by it, even though it clearly was not food.



A new study says that such "consumerism", a preference for shiny new stuff, is universal across the animal kingdom. And they showed it in piglets.

Lab-grown cartilage grown shows similar mechanical and chemical properties to the natural articular cartilage which allows our joints to move smoothly, according to a new study in Nature Materials. 

A team biomedical engineers from University of California, Davis, created the lab-grown tissue similar to natural cartilage by giving it a bit of a stretch, growing it under tension but without a supporting scaffold. Their results show similar mechanical and biochemical properties to natural articular cartilage.