Health, features and articles | Educational Science

May 31, 2007

Vacuum-packed Foods Breed Deadly Bacteria

Those sealed glossy packs of cheeses and lunchmeat on your grocer's shelf can provide a particularly friendly home for nasty bugs that cause food poisoning, new research shows. Vacuum-packed foods are deprived of oxygen to keep them fresh and boost their shelf life, but the same strategy is a boon...

May 31, 2007

Endurance Athletes Risk Deadly 'Water Intoxication'

Health experts cautioned yesterday that some endurance athletes drink too much water during exercise and are at risk of deadly water intoxication. Marathon runners, triathletes and cyclists are familiar with dehydration, caused by not drinking enough. But fewer are aware that too much water can kill. Water intoxication is formally...

May 31, 2007

Study: People Literally Feel Pain of Others

A brain anomaly can make the saying I know how you feel literally true in hyper-empathetic people who actually sense that they are being touched when they witness others being touched. The condition, known as mirror-touch synesthesia, is related to the activity of mirror neurons, cells recently discovered to fire...

Apr 30, 2007

Mystery Deaths Plague Coroners

WASHINGTON—Edge-of-your-seat story lines ripped from the headlines and saturated with mind-taxing scientific clues are the hallmarks of forensic shows such as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. While the coroners’ sleuthing can typically hone in on a cause of death by the show’s end, real medical examiners across the country are puzzled...

Apr 30, 2007

Meditation Sharpens the Mind

Three months of intense training in a form of meditation known as insight in Sanskrit can sharpen a person's brain enough to help them notice details they might otherwise miss. These new findings add to a growing body of research showing that millennia-old mental disciplines can help control and improve...

Apr 30, 2007

Human Ancestor Had a Pea Brain

Higher primates such as humans are considered the brainiacs of the mammalian world. But a 29-million-year-old fossilized skull suggests that one of our remote ancestors was a bit of a “pea brain,” sporting a noggin smaller than that of a modern lemur. The skull belonged to a common ancestor of...

Apr 30, 2007

The Strange History of Cheese

For many, the mild, slightly nutty flavor of Gruyère is the perfect addition to a steaming bowl of French onion soup or a ham sandwich, but for the medieval peasants who first created it, the flavor was secondary to matters of survival and location. Gruyère resulted from the historic collision...

Apr 30, 2007

Researchers Find Ã¢â‚¬ËœSkim Milk CowsÃ¢â‚¬â„¢

In a few years, skim milk may come straight from the cow, it was reported this week. Skim milk is usually produced by taking all of the fat out of regular milk, but in 2001, researchers found a cow that skipped that step. While screening a herd of cows, they...

Mar 31, 2007

Bizarre Human Brain Parasite Precisely Alters Fear

Rats usually have an innate fear of cat urine. The fear extends to rodents that have never seen a feline and those generations removed from ever meeting a cat. After they get infected with the brain parasite Toxoplasma gondii, however, rats become attracted to cat pee, increasing the chance they'll...

Mar 31, 2007

TV Show Reveals Eye Contact is Top Cop Tactic

Cops might want to put down the billy club and forget about psychology, new research suggests. An analysis of the TV show COPS reveals that the best way for police to calm down hysterical citizens is to look them straight in the eyes. Gaze is important to everyday face-to-face interactions,...

Mar 31, 2007

How Sight and Sound Can Trick Your Brain

Auditory and visual information in the brain can conspire to trick us into seeing things that are not there, according to new research that suggests our senses are more intimately linked than previously suspected. Researchers found that subjects shown a single flash of light sandwiched between two tones in quick...

Mar 31, 2007

Knowledge Makes Learning Easier

We learn better when the material meshes with what we already know, according to a new study of rats that researchers say could help explain human learning. Scientists trained rats to associate six feeding areas with six different flavors of rat food. After six weeks of training in a constant...

Feb 28, 2007

Study: Genes Make Women Cranky

Thanks for the lousy temper, Mom and Dad. Genetics could explain why some women are more ill-tempered than others. A new University of Pittsburgh study finds genetic variations that deal with the body's mood management chemistry are linked with anger, aggression and hostility in women. Top 10 Other Lousy Things...

Feb 28, 2007

New Technique Stores Data in Bacteria

Artificial DNA with encoded information can be added to the genome of common bacteria, thus preserving the data. The technique was developed at Keio University Institute for Advanced Biosciences and Keio University Shonan Fujisawa Campus. If you think those USB flash memory thumbdrives are small, check this data storage out....

Feb 28, 2007

Ayurveda: The Good, the Bad and the Expensive

For those who find acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine oh-so 1990s, India might have what you crave: its ancient healing system called ayurveda. The powerhouse of the Asian subcontinent is preparing for a major boom in health tourism. Hotels spas such as Taj Wellington Mews in Mumbai offer aromatherapy messages,...