As anyone who’s ever mindlessly munched through an entire bag of chips can attest, it’s easy to keep eating once you start. Just putting something tasty in your mouth makes you want more. New research in mice identifies a group of brain cells that may be responsible for this behavior. The cells are part of […]
What are the rules on masks in schools? Whether students have to wear masks, and the trouble they could face if they don’t, depends on where they go to school. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention encourages masks for most students, especially when they are less than 6 feet apart. The exceptions are […]
People with one of the most common heart disorders who are exposed to greater levels of pollution have a 1.2-fold higher risk of stroke than their peers who live with less pollution, according to a JAMA Network Open study published recently by researchers at the UPMC Heart and Vascular Institute and University of Pittsburgh School […]
(HealthDay)—Parents who choose to forgo or delay their children’s vaccinations may quickly find themselves without a pediatrician. Just over half (51%) of pediatric offices in the United States have a policy to dismiss families that refuse childhood vaccines, a nationwide survey found. Thirty-seven percent of pediatricians themselves said they often dismissed families for refusing vaccines, […]
Americans are increasingly concerned that regulators and manufacturers will rush a vaccine to market without an adequate review. That prompted nine vaccine front-runners, including Pfizer and Merck, to promise to abide by clinical and ethical standards in an effort to increase the public’s confidence in any vaccine that ultimately comes to market. As a scholar […]
Have you ever wondered whether the brains of right-handed people work differently from those of left-handers? Is it possible to distinguish between them by observing their brain activity in response to stimuli or tasks? These are important questions from the perspectives of both basic sciences and application-based fields such as brain-computer interfaces, rehabilitation robotics, and […]
Myotonic dystrophy type I is the most common type of adult-onset muscular dystrophy. People with the condition inherit repeated DNA segments that lead to the toxic buildup of repetitive RNA, the messenger that carries a gene’s recipe to the cell’s protein-making machinery. As a result, people born with myotonic dystrophy experience progressive muscle wasting and […]
Penn Medicine researchers have found that middle-aged individuals—those born in the late 1960s and the 1970s—may be in a perpetual state of H3N2 influenza virus susceptibility because their antibodies bind to H3N2 viruses but fail to prevent infections, according to a new study led by Scott Hensley, Ph.D., an associate professor of Microbiology at the […]
The car stopped at the traffic lights and the girl in the passenger seat looked over. I caught her glance as I pushed my bike with its broken chain slowly up the steep hill in the pouring rain towards the train station, dressed only in shorts and a T-shirt, soaked to the skin. And rather […]
The number of new confirmed coronavirus cases spiked Friday in parts of eastern Europe, with Hungary and the Czech Republic registering all-time daily highs. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said his government was drafting a “war plan” to defend against the second wave of the pandemic. The plan’s aim was “not for everyone to stay […]
