healthy living for women + their families
Reading your Facebook news feed may do more than keep you up to date. It may also influence the emotional state of your status updates – and that will affect your friends as well.
To reach that conclusion, social scientists at Cornell University, the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and Facebook, studied the news feed of 689,003 randomly selected Facebook users. In their experiment, they controlled the news feed of the users to add more negative stories or more positive stories.
Editor’s note: As of earlier this year, 20 states have legalized the use of marijuana for some serious medical conditions, including cancer, glaucoma and HIV/AIDS. But using medical marijuana isn’t a casual decision. Here, the National Institute on Drug Abuse offers (NIDA) offers a briefing on the most controversial medicine of our time:
According to NIDA, the term “medical marijuana” refers to the whole unprocessed marijuana plant or its crude extracts. The federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) doesn’t recognize or approve those substances as medicine.
Researchers have discovered a new drug target to fight Alzheimer’s, and the finding could lead to a new diagnostic tool as well.
Earlier drugs have long targeted the amyloid protein called plaques, which can cause neurons in the brain to die. But Penn State University researchers have found that another substance, a neurotransmitter known as GABA, could also be implicated in the development of Alzheimer’s.
Two widely carried gene variants that lead to longer chromosome caps also increase the risk of developing the brain cancers known as gliomas.
The researchers, led by scientists from the University of California, San Francisco, found that the variants lead to longer telomeres, the caps on chromosome ends that are thought to protect cells from aging.
The genetic variants, in two genes known as TERT and TERC, are respectively carried by 51 percent and 72 percent of the general population.
Ramucirumab, a drug designed to combat solid tumors, has proven effective as a second-line treatment for patients with advanced non-small-cell lung cancer when it’s combined with another drug, docetaxel.
In a randomized phase III clinical trial, the two drugs showed greater effectiveness than docetaxel combined with a placebo. The findings were published in the British journal Lancet.
A team of researchers, including corresponding study author Dr. Edward B. Garon, MD, of UCLA, looked at 1,253 patients.
Researchers are now able to reactivate a memory that has vanished from the brain.
A study from the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, detailed how researchers removed a memory from the brain of rat subjects and then restored it.
Lyme disease – and the ticks that transmit the uncomfortable, potentially serious condition – seem as inevitable a part of summer as sizzling hot days. But you can protect yourself. The first rule: Know your enemy. Here, from a producer of insect repellents, are ten things you might not know about these annoying insects.
1. Tick bites and tick-borne diseases are completely preventable
There’s really only one way you get a tick-transmitted disease and that’s from a tick bite.
Want people to think you’re even prettier than you are? Spray on some perfume, or have some flowers in the vicinity.
New research shows that women’s faces get a higher attractiveness rating when pleasant odors are in the vicinity. However, the odors didn’t affect people’s evaluation of age.
“Odor pleasantness and facial attractiveness integrate into one joint emotional evaluation,” said lead author Janina Seubert, PhD, a cognitive neuroscientist who was a postdoctoral fellow at Monell Chemical Senses Center, in Philadelphia, at the time the research was conducted.
Many of us are rightly concerned about heart health, cancer, hypertension and diabetes. In the midst of all this, our liver health may not be at the top of the list. But the liver, one of our vital organs, is paramount to our health, and it’s essential to protect it. It renders toxins harmless and makes sure they are expelled from the body, according to the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Unfortunately, drugs and even dietary supplements can make the liver go haywire, the FDA says.
Environmental toxins play a significant part in your molecular aging, according to new research.
Researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill say toxins that affect the rate of such aging include benzene, cigarette smoke and even stress. Molecular age refers to the age of the body’s cells, and is different from chronological age.
Scientists have discovered exactly how the anti-cancer drug Taxol works, and the discovery could lead to designing better medicines.
Taxol, one of the most widely prescribed anti-cancer drugs globally, disrupts the workings of microtubules, part of the cell’s skeleton.
Why do we have an obesity epidemic? Experts have come up with a number of reasons, and most of them might be wrong, according to new research.
The findings, by investigators from the University of Illinois, Champaign, indicate that people have better access to fresh, affordable food than they did years ago.
Researchers have found exactly how a drug works to mimic the action of eating well and, as a result, possibly extending lifespan.
The drug, an immunosuppressant and antibiotic called Rapamycin, was approved for use about 15 years ago.
It’s generally accepted that olive oil is healthy, but researchers have found exactly how it makes its dietary magic.
Researchers from King’s College London looked at whether unsaturated fats such as olive oil, and nitrite-rich vegetables (lettuce) benefited from their inhibition of an enzyme.
An investigation into the 1918 flu pandemic has yielded some findings that could help experts improve current health policies, researchers say.
Researchers from the University of Missouri looked at remote regions in North American to see how environmental, nutritional land economic factors determined the effect the pandemic had on them.
The flu pandemic infected more than 500 million people and killed at least 50 million.
Researchers have determined exactly how a “molecular motor” drives a process that invades cells. That finding could be crucial in combating viral infections.
In the study, researchers from the University of California Berkeley reached new conclusions on how a type of molecular motor is used to “package” the DNA of a number of viruses, including herpes and adenoviruses. Once the DNA is packaged in the virus, it can invade the body and cause infection.
Humans and their animal companions exchange the bacteria for the antibiotic-resistant MRSA, according to a new study.
The findings were published in mBio, the journal of the American Society for Microbiology.
MRSA naturally lives on the skin and causes difficult-to-treat infections in humans and animals. It is hard to treat because over time it has become resistant to antibiotics.
Researchers have zeroed in on a molecule that’s involved in cell death, a discovery that could lead to better treatment for inflammatory illnesses such as psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis and Crohn’s disease.
The investigators found that a previously identified molecule, RIPK1, inhibits necroptosis (cell death), which is implicated in inflammatory conditions. Paradoxically, RIPK1 is also responsible for initiating cell death.
