Press Releases

Researchers have developed an early warning system to predict the risk of dengue infections for the 553 microregions of Brazil during the football World Cup. The estimates show that the chance of a dengue outbreak is enough of a possibility to warrant a high-alert warning in the three northeastern venues (Natal, Fortaleza, and Recife) but is likely to be generally ... Read More »

Particles from the sun not only warm our planet and occasionally knock out radio signals, but also cause electrical storms, according to new research from England. Scientists from the department of meteorology at the University of Reading have announced a link between increased thunderstorm activity on Earth and streams of high-energy particles accelerated by the solar wind, suggesting those space ... Read More »

The U.S. Postal Service has released its rankings of the cities with the most dog attacks in 2013. Across America, 5,581 postal employees were attacked throughout the year. A total of about 4.5 million Americans are bitten by dogs annually, and according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, half of those are children. Read More »

There’s a breakfast cereal out there that’s 88 percent sugar: Lieber’s Cocoa Frosted Flakes. Basically, it’s a bowl of sugar, with some cocoa for flavor and grain for crunch. Plus a little sugar on top. It’s gluten-free — probably because the makers wanted to make more room for sugar. That’s an extreme example, but not as extreme as you might ... Read More »

As the Earth’s oceans have warmed over the past three decades, the staging grounds for destructive hurricanes have crept toward the poles, according to a study by three of the world’s leading tropical weather experts. This could be the first “robust” signal that the buildup of greenhouse gases from human activity is influencing tropical storms, the authors said. Read More »

A Health Canada safety review of several serotonin-blocking drugs used to treat nausea and vomiting due to cancer therapy has identified a potentially life-threatening side-effect of the medications. The drugs dolasetron (Anzemet), granisetron (Kytril and related generics), ondansetron (Zofran and generics) and palonosetron (Aloxi) pose the risk of serotonin syndrome, the federal department said Wednesday. Read More »

Scientists have stumbled onto a genetic marker that’s linked to obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). “If this finding is confirmed, it could be useful,” said lead study author Gerald Nestadt, M.D., M.P.H., a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and director of Johns Hopkins’ Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Program, via a press release. “We might ultimately ... Read More »

A new molecule has been found that will help prevent the symptoms associated with allergen-induced asthma, a chronic disease affecting more than millions of people. Read More »

OR-7, the wolf who captivated wildlife-loving Californians when he started wandering into California in 2011, has been spending time in the vicinity of a female wolf in the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest in southwestern Oregon this month, and data from his radio transmitter indicates the two may have denned there, according to an alert on the Oregon Department of Fish ... Read More »

A robotic arm developed by Swiss researchers could be used to capture debris orbiting our planet, according to its creators. The bionic arm, which was developed by researchers at École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), one of the two Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology, is capable of grasping flying objects with complex shapes and trajectories in less than five-hundredths of ... Read More »

Alcohol killed or contributed to the deaths of more than 3.3 million people in 2012, according to a new report from the World Health Organization. The report, released Monday, added that alcohol is blamed for one death every 10 seconds. Read More »