The First Pair of Glasses: A Geek Rite of Passage

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Something that many geeks have in common is vision correction. Whether you choose to sport stylishly geeky frames or to wear contact lenses, it’s a pretty common thing to not have 20/20 vision. Personally, I was eight years old when I got my first pair of glasses. We discovered that I needed them [...]

Vaccination Patch Could Make Immunizations Painless

For most people, the worst thing about getting a vaccination is the big, scary hypodermic needle. So researchers have invented a new vaccine-delivery system that replaces the large single needle with 100 tiny dissolvable ones embedded in a Band-Aid–like patch. The new patch can immunize mice against influenza just as effectively as conventional needle [...]

Happiness and Sadness Spread Just Like Disease

There may be a literal truth underlying the common-sense intuition that happiness and sadness are contagious.
A new study on the spread of emotions through social networks shows that these feelings circulate in patterns analogous to what’s seen from epidemiological models of disease.
Earlier studies raised the possibility, but had not mapped social networks against actual disease [...]

EPA Reverses Controversial ‘Human Guinea Pig’ Rule

Under proposed changes to federal research ethics standards, the Environmental Protection Agency will no longer accept studies that use people as guinea pigs in chemical tests.
In 2006, under chemical-industry pressure, and over arguments that the studies were scientifically and ethically bankrupt, the EPA declared such data acceptable. On June 16, the EPA reversed its [...]

New Flu Vaccines Could Protect Against All Strains

A new vaccine may be able to provide some protection against all strains of influenza.
Current immunizations create antibodies that target a specific piece of a molecule on the surface of the virus that researchers call its “head.” That piece of the hemaglutinin protein evolves very quickly, which is why you have to get a different [...]

Dementia Caregivers More Likely to Also Get the Disease

Elderly people who care for a spouse who has dementia are at increased risk of developing dementia themselves, a study finds. The stress of attending to a mentally incapacitated spouse may somehow contribute to the added risk, scientists report in the May Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.
Previous studies have shown that chronic stress leads [...]

Designers Want to Improve Your Health With These Strange Objects

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SAN FRANCISCO — Most people see health as the output of a few different inputs like food, exercise and medicine. But how good your body and mind feel is mediated by the objects that surround you, too.
In a new design studio at the California College of the Arts, instructors [...]

What Cuba Can Teach Us About Health Care

Just a morning’s boat ride from the tip of Florida is a place where medical costs are low and doctors plentiful. It’s Cuba, and Stanford University physician Paul Drain says it’s time for the United States to pay attention to our neighbor’s shoestring success.
Despite a 50-year trade embargo by the United States and a post-Soviet [...]

Scrubbing IDs Out of Medical Records for Genetic Studies

A new technique allows medical records to be used for research on the genetics of disease while still protecting patients from prying eyes.
Databases that link thousands of people’s DNA profiles to their medical histories are a powerful tool for researchers who want to use genetics to individualize the diagnosis and treatment of disease. But this [...]

Gluvi: A $10 Condom for Remote Controls

We get both weird and wonderful submissions to our Gadget Lab tips hotline, all of which we enjoy. Then we get something like the Gluvi, and it makes me doubt not just the world of gadgets, but the future of humanity itself. The Gluvi is a small plastic bag into which you slip a remote [...]