Likely E. Coli (Escherichia Coli) Tainted Meat Recalled By Cargill Meat Solutions

Featured ArticleMain Category: Nutrition / Diet Also Included In: Infectious Diseases / Bacteria / Viruses Article Date: 29 Aug 2010 – 13:00 PDT email to a friend   printer friendly   opinions   8,500 pounds of ground beef products are being recalled due to possible E. coli (Escherichia coli) contamination by Cargill Meat Solutions Corp., [...]

Human Cases Of West Nile Virus And Eastern Equine Encephalitis In Massachusetts

Editor’s ChoiceMain Category: Infectious Diseases / Bacteria / Viruses Article Date: 28 Aug 2010 – 9:00 PDT email to a friend   printer friendly   opinions   A 46-year-old woman from Suffolk County, Massachusetts, is the first human case of West Nile Virus in the state this year, reports the Department of Public Health. The [...]

Is Flu Jab Pandemrix Linked To Narcolepsy? European Medicines Agency Investigates

Editor’s ChoiceMain Category: Swine Flu Also Included In: Immune System / Vaccines;  Flu / Cold / SARS Article Date: 27 Aug 2010 – 12:00 PDT email to a friend   printer friendly   opinions   The European Commission asked the European Medicines Agency (EMEA) to investigate whether GlaxoSmithKline’s flu jab, Panemrix is linked to a higher [...]

Recession may have pushed U.S. birth rate to new low (AP)

Forget the Dow and the GDP. Here’s the latest economic indicator: The U.S. birth rate has fallen to its lowest level in at least a century as many people apparently decided they couldn’t afford more mouths to feed. The birth rate dropped for the second year in a row since the recession began in 2007. [...]

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 [...]