Roughly 100,000 years ago, human evolution reached a mysterious bottleneck: Our ancestors had been reduced to perhaps five to ten thousand individuals living in Africa. In time, “behaviorally modern” humans would emerge from this population, expanding dramatically in both number and range, and replacing all other co-existing evolutionary cousins, such as the Neanderthals. The cause…
In recent years, diseases have ravaged through bat, honeybee and amphibian populations, and now animal experts suspect that shared factors may link the deaths, which are putting many species at risk for extinction. The latest setback affects bats, given this week’s announcement that the deadly fungal disease known as white-nose syndrome has been confirmed in…
This spring the World Health Organization (WHO) celebrated the early completion the 2015 development goal of bringing improved drinking water to an additional two billion people since 1990. The feat was a landmark in securing what the U.N. General Assembly declared in 2010 was a universal human right: “access to safe and clean water.” In…
Both atmospheric forces and the flow of circumpolar rivers carry mercury, a toxic element, north into the Arctic Ocean new research indicates. While the atmospheric source was previously recognized, it now appears that twice as much mercury actually comes from the rivers. The revelation implies that concentrations of the toxin may further increase as climate…
A small study raises more concern about the long-term consequences of brain injuries suffered by thousands of soldiers — suggesting they may be at risk of developing the same degenerative brain disease as some retired football players. Autopsies of four young veterans found the earliest signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, in their brain…
The task of finding the genetic roots of common disease seems much harder, dimming the promise of personal genomics and the chances of quick medical payoffs from the human genome project, given new data about the human genome in two reports published online in the journal Science. It now appears that large numbers of very…
People with higher levels of education and higher income have lower rates of many chronic diseases compared to those with less education and lower income levels, according to the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics. Highly educated people tend to have healthier behaviors, avoid unhealthy ones and have more access to care.
Carson C. Chow deploys mathematics to solve the everyday problems of real life. As an investigator at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, he tries to figure out why 1 in 3 Americans are obese. He spoke with The New York Times at the 2012 annual meeting of the American Association…
As many working people and students can attest, the sound of the alarm clock in the morning can mean an unpleasant jolt out of a nice deep sleep. And disrupting the body’s internal clock in this way can lead to a higher risk of becoming overweight or obese, according to a new European study published…
A new study suggests you can keep dementia at bay by developing a firm purpose in life. The findings don’t prove that having a purpose will make a difference, and it’s possible that the researchers missed another important factor that’s at play. Still, the study, published in the May issue of the Archives of General…