‘Lose weight’ mantra is misguided therapy, many obese people live long and healthy lives
They rose to fame as the world’s fattest mice. At about 130 grammes, the rodents were “the equivalent of 600 pounds in humans,” says diabetes researcher Philipp Scherer. They were born to genetically engineered mouse parents in his lab at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. One set of...
Burkinabe women displaced by Islamist militants tell of how they pay for food with ‘survival sex’ in UN camps
Women who escaped deadly attacks by Islamist militants, who have triggered one of the world’s fastest-growing displacement crises, say they go for weeks without food. But their ordeal, they said, didn’t end there: in places of supposed refuge, local men demanded sex from them in exchange for humanitarian assistance. Eight...
Modern cuisine researchers revisit ancient cookery to unlock secrets of past recipes
To better understand how past cooking relates to modern data, researchers have dived into experimental archaeology. Starting in 2014, researchers cooked various recipes in store-bought unglazed ceramic pots every week. Over the course of a year, they used the same pot to cook the same recipe 50 times, then switched...
How stem cells work to repair raptured heart tissues, increase blood flow
All cells and tissues are constantly telling each other what they need and whether they’re stressed through molecular signalling. “When you lose a chunk of cells in a heart attack, you lose part of that conversation,” explains Charles Murry, an experimental pathologist and director of the Institute for Stem Cell...
Heart attacks: Injured hearts can be revived with stem cells instead of drugs
Twenty years ago, cardiologist and stem-cell scientist Piero Anversa published an exciting paper. He was then a prominent researcher at New York Medical College in Valhalla, and his data in mice showed that injured hearts could regenerate with the help of stem cells taken from bone marrow – contrary to...
‘Among urban women, prevalence of autoimmune disorder is common as a result of more sedentary lifestyles’
The female immune system has developed a complicated strategy that enables it to fight off pathogens without endangering the foetus, says Melissa Wilson, a geneticist and evolutionary biologist at Arizona State University in Tempe. At various stages of pregnancy, she says, the body seems to ramp up and turn down...
Medics grapple with why autoimmunity is most common in women, not men
When Rhonda Voskuhl was a postdoctoral fellow at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the mid-1990s, it was common knowledge among clinicians that multiple sclerosis (MS) – an autoimmune disease that affects the brain and spinal cord – was about twice as common in women as in men....
Scientists turn to pottery for clues on what ancient generations ate, cooked food
Unearthed from the graves of children, ceramic baby bottles from thousands of years ago would look perfectly at home in nurseries today. Some have little feet, and one bottle’s spout juts from a ceramic critter’s bottom like a tail. These itty-bitty Bronze and Iron Age vessels smack of whimsy. But...
Survey in United Kingdom finds bullying and harassment are rife in astronomy
Bullying and harassment are rife in astronomy and geophysics in Britain and perhaps other regions, according to the results of a survey conducted last year by the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) in London. Among 661 researchers polled, more than half of whom were in the United Kingdom, 44 per cent...
From Zero Hunger to severe food shortages, Brazil braces for hard times
Brazil is grappling with severe food insecurity, which is characterised by the inability to eat for a whole day; while moderate food insecurity means that a person is concerned or uncertain about future access to food, or the quality of food they can access is compromised. “For the past few...
