Public Health

"Those among us who are anthropologically inclined tend to view a can or bottle of soda as an instantly recognizable symbol of everything that is wrong with Western civilization as we know it" is the first sign indication that you have left planet Earth and officially joined the alternative universe of Woo. And your tour guide is the features director at Martha Stewart Living. Now, when it comes to celebrity criminals, I like Martha Stewart, mostly because Steve Madden never really bounced back after his prison sentence while Stewart became more popular than ever after her conviction. And I…

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory indoor air researchers have found hazardous levels of nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide in a surprisingly large percentage of California home kitchens. And the most common device for mitigating this indoor air problem — range hoods — vary widely in performance. In a study ( submitted to Environmental Health Perspectives) of southern California homes which was submitted to Environmental Health Perspectives, Brett Singer group found that a significant portion of residences exceed outdoor air quality standards for several pollutants on a weekly basis as…

800 million people lack reliable access to drinkable water and that problem could engulf many more in the years ahead, warns Alex Scott, senior editor for Europe at Chemical&Engineering News. The problem, Scott says, is that most companies involved in water treatment technologies focus on providing services in wealthy industrialized nations. But today's most critical shortage of clean water is impacting impoverished areas of sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia and other poor regions that can't afford to build or sustain large-scale water purification plants. Companies that provide…

The pharmaceutical treatment of disease has obviously improved a lot in 50 years but that doesn't mean kids like the taste of medicine. Does that mean kids won't take it? Perhaps they won't take it, if you are the worst parent ever, but a review in Clinical Therapeutics takes the issues out of folklore and highlights recent advances in the scientific understanding of bitter taste, with special attention to the sensory world of children.  Several biological factors highlight the importance of understanding bitter taste to the successful formulation of pediatric medications. Bitter taste…

Gingivae is soft tissue that serves as a biological barrier to cover the oral cavity side of the maxilla and mandible. Recently, the gingivae were identified as containing mesenchymal stem cells (GMSCs). However, it is unknown whether the GMSCs are derived from cranial neural crest cells (CNCC) or the mesoderm.  In a new study, lead author Songtao Shi, Center for Craniofacial Molecular Biology, Ostrow School of Dentistry, University of Southern California, Los Angeles and his team of researchers demonstrated that around 90 percent of GMSCs are derived from CNCC and 10 percent from the…

'Organic' milk has a lower concentration of elements like zinc, iodine and selenium than milk produced by conventional farming methods, due to the absence of mineral substances in the diets of the cows reared.  According to researchers at the University of Santiago de Compostela, animals on organic farms should have their diets supplemented with iodine because it is a very important element for children and pregnant women. The concentration of nutrients in animal food products is linked to the diets of the animals reared. Conventional production methods provide mineral diet supplements,…

About 5 million children worldwide have been born by IVF since 1978, and 1.4 percent of total births in the U.S. annually and as many as 4.4 percent in western Europe result from the procedure, according to government and industry figures.  Across all types of IVF procedures, compared with spontaneous pregnancies, a study found no increase in the risk of autism, but in one type there was. Intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection, in which a sperm surgically extracted from the testes is injected directly into an egg before being transplanted to the womb, was associated with an increased risk of…

Methane has been in water since man has been able to drink water from the ground - but when environmental activists sink their teeth into a fundraising issue, it suddenly becomes a cancer epidemic (nuclear power, along with everything else) and, in the case of hydraulic fracturing - fracking - the Earth deflating and even setting water on fire. Now, water on fire is hilarious. Pittsburgh, like every other place, has lots of chemicals in its water and most prevalent is the one that makes people ridicule Cleveland. Yet if you ask most people about when the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland was on…

One of the few Anglo-Saxon kings whose name is still familiar is Æthelred the Unready.  To modern ears, this sounds as if he had ignored the Scout motto “Be Prepared”, but “Unready” is better translated; the Old English “Unræd” means, rather, “Ill-advised”. [1] Now I am feeling as perplexed as the chap in the picture above, what with all the advice I receive, from home and abroad, about my diet.  This year, I seem to have developed a condition whereby too high a glycaemic load makes me itch or develop spots for an hour or so at a time.  One direction from which this comes…

Claims from Chen-Yu Zhang's group at China's Nanjing University made international headlines when they reported that, after mice ate lettuce, bits of genetic material from the plants made its way into their bloodstreams intact - and could turn the animals' own genes off. Miracle vegetable of the week journalists said it was a triumph for the promise of medicinal food. Scare journalism of the week writers instead worried that genetically modified food might modify consumers in unanticipated ways. Look for actual science to receive far less attention. A research team from Johns Hopkins writing…