Ed Cara

ScienceHealth

Your Caffeine or Nicotine Addiction Could Make Your Hospital Stay a Whole Lot Worse

A coffee or smoking habit can cause a person some serious trouble if they end up in the hospital, preliminary research suggests. Patients in the intensive care unit often suffer withdrawal symptoms from caffeine and nicotine, it found. Worse still, doctors might mistake the cause of those symptoms for something else, leading to unneeded testing … Continued

ScienceHealth

Doctors Had to Put Out a Fire in Patient’s Chest During Open Heart Surgery

An Australian patient’s life-saving surgical procedure went up in flames, and unfortunately we don’t mean that figuratively. Doctors say their attempts to perform emergency heart surgery on the man went slightly awry at one point, when a flash fire sparked in the man’s cracked-open chest cavity. Amazingly, the doctors were able to put out the … Continued

ScienceHealth

Man Suffers 9-Day Erection After Bruising Taint in Moped Accident

A man’s fall from a moped caused him much stranger trouble than anyone could have imagined. According to his doctors, a bruise near his genitals left him with a days-long erection—one that eventually required a trip to the emergency room to treat. Thankfully, doctors were able to resolve his awkward complication, and the patient had … Continued

ScienceBiology

Bias Against Female Lab Animals Is Messing Up Scientific Research

Gender discrimination in science doesn’t just affect women scientists. It also skews the results of animal research, as a new paper out this week describes. Animals used in experiments are still overwhelmingly male, thanks to outdated stereotypes that hormones like estrogen can distort an experiment’s findings. The argument comes courtesy of Rebecca Shansky, an associate … Continued

ScienceHealth

Is Secondhand Vape Bad for You?

You don’t have to look far to find a fresh study suggesting that e-cigarette use isn’t harmless, even if the products are likely less toxic than traditional tobacco cigarettes. But what about people sitting in the same room or living in the same home as someone who vapes? Is there such a thing as secondhand vape? … Continued

ScienceHealth

A Man’s Love of Licorice Tea Landed Him in the Emergency Room

One man’s hot tea habit turned out to be much less relaxing than he hoped, according to his doctors. An 84-year-old Canadian ended up in the emergency department with a serious case of high blood pressure, headache, and chest pain, with the only likely cause of his symptoms being his two weeks straight of drinking … Continued

ScienceBiology

Vets Say They Saved a Dog’s Life Using an Experimental Fish Skin Graft

Here’s a feel-good story to carry you through the Memorial Day weekend. Veterinarians at Michigan State University say they were able to save the life of a one-year-old Rottweiler named Stella who had been horrifically burned, thanks in part to an innovative technology that uses fish skin to help the body heal itself. Stella was … Continued

ScienceHealth

The FDA Tells the Food Industry to Change How It Uses ‘Expiration’ Dates

The Food and Drug Administration is going after food waste with a new effort to make sure we don’t throw out groceries until they’re absolutely inedible. On Thursday, the agency issued a letter to the food industry at large, throwing its support behind a growing trend to almost universally adopt a “Best if Used By” … Continued

ScienceHealth

The U.S. Cities With the Most Deaths From Air Pollution

Decreasing levels of air pollution in the U.S. have led to fewer deaths and illnesses, according to a new report out this week. But there are pockets of the country, namely Los Angeles, where air pollution kills thousands of people, and, frighteningly, the Trump administration is poised to reverse the progress against pollution made in … Continued

Tech News

Stanford Students Built This Adorable, Bouncy, Open-Source Robot Dog

If you’ve always dreamed of having a low-maintenance, vaguely dog-shaped companion, well, you’re in luck. A group of undergraduate and graduate students at Stanford University have just unveiled Doggo, a relatively cheap, light, four-legged robot with the bouncing ability of a typical toy breed. Best of all, they’ve made the instructions to building your very … Continued

ScienceHealth

CBD Might Help People Struggling With Opioid Addiction, Small Trial Shows

A new study out Tuesday is the latest to suggest that cannabis—or at least a key ingredient of it—might help people struggling with addiction. It found that people with opioid use disorder experienced less symptoms of craving when given cannabidiol, or CBD, over a placebo. CBD also helped them calm down and reduced their anxiety. … Continued

ScienceHealth

Vaping Could Make It Harder For Your Body to Fight the Flu, Preliminary Research Suggests

Anyone who’s regularly smoked knows that colds and flus can hit them harder than they would a non-smoker. But people who vape could be in for the same sort of trouble, according to some new (and very preliminary) research out today. It suggests that e-cigarettes can weaken the body’s ability to fend off the flu … Continued

Tech News

Stop Using Homemade Sunscreen Recipes You Found on Pinterest

Those looking to stay safe from the sun should steer far clear of do-it-yourself sunscreens, a new study out Monday suggests. The study looked at recipes of homemade sunscreens shared on the popular website Pinterest and found these concoctions were woefully worse at actually protecting our skin from UV radiation than commercial sunscreens. Pinterest, like … Continued

ScienceHealth

Why Does Coffee Make Us Poop? Scientists Gave Coffee to Rats to Find Out

A good chunk of regular coffee drinkers know that coffee isn’t just great at getting them awake in the morning—it also makes them get up and go poop. But while coffee’s laxative powers are well-known, it’s not clear why exactly this happens. To get to the bottom of this mystery, some scientists decided to do … Continued

ScienceHealth

American Births Hit a 32-Year Low

Americans are continuing to have fewer and fewer children, according to a new government report released this week. Slightly fewer than 3.8 million children were born in 2018, the report found—a 2 percent decrease from 2017, and the lowest total number of births seen in 32 years. The fertility rate among women also reached a … Continued

ScienceBiology

A Newly Discovered Mutation May Explain Why Some Dogs Can’t Breathe Well

As wonderfully cute as dog breeds like the French Bulldog look (for some people at least), it’s long been thought that these dogs’ distinctively compact skulls also make them very vulnerable to severe health and breathing issues. But new research out of Europe suggests that smushy faces are only part of the problem for some … Continued

ScienceHealth

A New Diet Study Confirms Your Worst Suspicions About Ultra-Processed Foods

A U.S. government-led trial may confirm the worst fears of anyone whose diet starts and ends in the frozen food aisle. It suggests that people who mostly eat ultra-processed foods will take in more calories and gain more weight than those who stick to mostly unprocessed foods—even if the two diets start off with the … Continued

ScienceBiology

Bed Bugs Have Been Creeping Around and Sucking Blood Since the Age of Dinosaurs

While bed bugs have been tormenting humanity for millennia, it’s long been assumed their evolutionary journey as parasites first began tens of millions of years ago, when they fed on bats. But an international team of scientists has found evidence suggesting the origin of these vampiric insects extends even further into the past—back to the … Continued

ScienceHealth

Scientists Say They’ve Created a Smartphone App That Can Hear Ear Infections

Wondering if your kid is dealing with an ear infection? Soon, according to researchers at the University of Washington, there’ll be an app for that. They claim to have created a simple test that uses a smartphone and folded up paper to detect one of the telltale signs of infection—fluid in the ears—with about the … Continued

ScienceHealth

Political Controversies Can Inspire Bullying in Schools, Public Health Researchers Say

Political controversies that receive heavy media coverage trickle down into classrooms and spark bullying, suggests a new study out this week. It found that children in California reported being bullied more over their sexual orientation during 2008 and 2009—when the contentious Proposition 8, which temporarily prevented same sex marriage in the state, was passed—than before … Continued