Humans
- Health & Medicine
You can be too thin
Eating disorders aren’t about vanity. They are mental illnesses that can prove deadly.
- Health & Medicine
The media’s dangerous influence on body image
A study found how powerful TV and ad messages can be in distorting the attitudes about body image among young girls in Fiji.
- Archaeology
Mummies existed before Egypt’s pyramids
Materials from an ancient Egyptian cemetery suggest people were preserving their dead long before the pyramids and pharaohs.
- Health & Medicine
Watch out: Cell phones can be addictive
Smartphones and Facebook are convenient. New research shows that for some people they also can become dangerously addictive.
- Health & Medicine
Ebola update: Signs of hope
The deadly outbreak of Ebola in West Africa is the worst the world has ever seen. Scientists are studying the virus that causes it and testing experimental vaccines and treatments to try to save lives.
- Health & Medicine
Early school starts can turn teens into ‘zombies’
Teens face serious consequences when they don’t get enough sleep. Yet most school start times don’t allow a full night’s rest, doctors say. The result: Too many students become ‘walking zombies’.
- Animals
Chef puts eco-bullies on the menu
Some immigrant species can become a nuisance, eating up or displacing the natives. Often people find little incentive to catch and remove the newcomers — unless they find them too yummy to pass up.
- Brain
Mistakes: A key to learning
This man uses a robotic arm to move a cursor across a computer screen. The screen blocks his view of his hand and arm. This focuses his attention on any errors he makes as he tries to move a cursor to a target location.
- Brain
Learning rewires the brain
Brain cells actually change shape as we learn. It’s one way we cement new knowledge. And much of the action happens as we sleep.
- Health & Medicine
Starchy foods may cut meaty risks
Eating red meat can increase the risk of certain types of cancer. But scientists have discovered that eating potatoes and other foods containing 'resistant' starch can help limit those risks.
- Health & Medicine
Ebola emerges in the Congo
The Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire) is where the Ebola virus was first discovered in 1976. This nation has just been hit again by the disease. Scientists suspect this is a new and independent outbreak — not a spread of the epidemic ravaging West Africa.
- Health & Medicine
Ebola treatments and vaccines could be near
Using experimental medicines against Ebola might help to slow or end an outbreak in Africa that has defied efforts to control it.
