Health & Medicine
- Health & Medicine
Zika vaccines look promising
As a Zika epidemic surges through Brazil and northward, scientists are looking for drugs to keep more people from becoming infected. Several vaccines show promise in early tests — but none has yet been tried in people.
- Animals
This mammal has the world’s slowest metabolism
A sloth species manages to exist with a super-slow metabolism by moving little and using its environment for heating and cooling its body.
- Animals
Catching ‘Dory’ fish can poison entire coral reef ecosystems
More than half of saltwater-aquarium fish sold in the United States may have been caught in the wild using cyanide, new data show.
- Health & Medicine
Adult diseases may be linked to childhood weight
Danish scientists find that very overweight kids grow up with a heightened risk of colon cancer and stroke.
- Brain
Teen drinking may damage ability to cope with stress
Teens are often tempted to drink alcohol. Drinking too much — and repeatedly — can hurt their ability to manage stress, a study in rats indicates.
- Health & Medicine
Helping MS patients get a grip on things
An Irish teen has invented a device that helps people with multiple sclerosis address the “clenched fist” symptom that afflicts most such patients.
- Animals
Uh oh! Baby fish prefer plastic to real food
Given a choice, baby fish will eat plastic microbeads instead of real food. That plastic stunts their growth and makes them easier prey for predators.
- Health & Medicine
Heat sickness
Scientists worry that increasing temperatures could combine with air pollution to up rates of illness and premature death — perhaps dramatically.
- Animals
Eating toxic algae makes plankton speedy swimmers
After slurping up harmful algae, copepods swim fast and straight — making them easy prey for hungry predators.
- Health & Medicine
Teen offers technology that could help brain surgeons
It can reproduce plastic models of the precise faulty vessels that need fixing. Now doctors can see them, hold them and practice on them long before they pick up a scalpel.
- Animals
Common plant could help fight Zika virus
A teen discovered that extracts from leaves of the San Francisco plant (Codiaeum variegatum) kill larvae of the mosquito that helps spread the Zika and dengue fever viruses.
- Animals
Bed bugs have favorite colors
Bed bugs change their color preferences as they get older. Adults like red and black, which may help the dark bugs avoid predators.
