I honestly find so many interesting articles almost every time I read the NYTimes Science section. I'd love to share all of them, but I realize that's a little overwhelming. For today, I'll share a little snippet with links to the articles, and I hope you check some of them out!
Scientists have found Pre-Columbian lice. This means that Columbus and other explorers likely did not spread lice to the Americas. Even more interesting is the possibility that the explorers brought diseases back to Europe. In the article, a few scientists postulate that perhaps Typhus was brought from the Americas to Europe, which is an interesting twist of conventional wisdom.
We all know we need to live more green, but people aren't sure how to do it. Unfortunately, the article doesn't give a whole lot of cheap ideas, and it mostly centers around how expensive it is to do a green conversion in cities. Too bad.
A strange epidemic of illness is explored at a meat packing plant. Quite interesting article. In a nutshell, doctors realized that aerosolized brain particles (which are produced when a high air pressure hose is used to liquefy brain tissue for harvesting out of the skull) may be responsible for some mighty strange symptoms. Seems human bodies go into overdrive when itty bits of pig brain enter the body.
At least for preschoolers, prior trauma influences ability to recover from subsequent trauma. This was noticed in the wake of 9/11 attacks. Researchers studied stress symptoms in children from NYC and concluded that those most affected by 9/11 were children who had experienced prior trauma. Additionally, the threshhold for "prior trauma" is quite low -- dog bites or the illness of a parent were examples given.
I am vindicated in my refusal to drink diet soda. They're not sure if it's due to correlated behaviors or a chemical in the soda itself, but diet soda drinkers are more likely to develop metabolic syndrome and/or high blood pressure.
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