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Ice expected to disappear from North Pole (7/2/08) -- Ice, for the first time in human history, could disappear from the North Pole this year, scientists say.
With the disappearance of the Arctic sea ice, it is making it possible to reach the North Pole sailing in a boat through open water, the Independent reported Friday.
The newspaper reported that some scientists say they believe the ice at 90 degrees north could melt away by summer.
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Study shows how broccoli fights cancer (7/2/08) -- Just a few more portions of broccoli each week may protect men from prostate cancer, British researchers reported on Wednesday.
The researchers believe a chemical in the food sparks hundreds of genetic changes, activating some genes that fight cancer and switching off others that fuel tumors, said Richard Mithen, a biologist at Britain's Institute of Food Research.
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Mediterranean diet 'cuts cancer' (7/2/08) -- Adopting just a couple of elements of the Mediterranean diet could cut the risk of cancer by 12%, say scientists.
A study of 26,000 Greek people found just using more olive oil alone cut the risk by 9%.
The diet, reports the British Journal of Cancer, also includes higher amounts of fruits, vegetables, cereals, and less red meat.
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Group: Effectiveness of Sunscreens Hazy (7/1/08) -- An environmental research and advocacy group claims that four out of five brand-name sunscreens either provide inadequate sun protection or contain chemicals that may be unsafe, but industry representatives strongly dispute the charge.
In a report released Tuesday, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) calls on the FDA to implement promised changes in sunscreen labeling that would require manufacturers to provide more detailed information about the level of sun protection their products provide.
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Penguin decline indicates state of world oceans (7/1/08) -- The struggle of penguins to survive is a clear sign that the world's marine systems are in trouble. Of the 17 penguin species more than half are listed as endangered or vulnerable.
A new study claims that penguins now run a gauntlet of environmental challenges, from climate change, commercial fishing, pollution and tourism.
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Watermelon May Have Viagra-effect (7/1/08) -- A cold slice of watermelon has long been a Fourth of July holiday staple. But according to recent studies, the juicy fruit may be better suited for Valentine’s Day. That’s because scientists say watermelon has ingredients that deliver Viagra-like effects to the body’s blood vessels and may even increase libido.
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Mother's junk food 'harms child' (6/30/08) -- Eating a poor diet when pregnant or breastfeeding may cause long-lasting health damage to the child, animal studies suggest.
The offspring of rats fed fatty, processed food had high levels of fat in their bloodstream and around major organs even after adolescence.
The animals had a raised diabetes risk - even if they ate healthily.
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Flooding could increase Gulf's 'dead zone' (6/22/08) -- FLOODWATERS loaded with farm run-off are heading down the Mississippi River in the US and scientists fear the deluge will dramatically increase this year's "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico.
The zone is a region of the Gulf off the southeastern United States that is starved of oxygen during much of the mid-year heat and cannot support fish or other marine life.
Hundreds of dead zones occur around the world, wreaking havoc with the ecology and cutting off vast areas from commercial fishing. The Gulf of Mexico zone is the western hemisphere's largest.
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Vitamin E good for Alzheimer patients (4/16/08) -- Vitamin E appears to help patients with Alzheimer's survive longer than those who don't take the vitamin, according to a study.
Known to delay the progression of moderately severe Alzheimer's disease, now it has been shown to increase the survival time of these patients as well, said study's co-author Valory Pavlik, of Baylor College of Medicine, Houston.
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EPA urges Great Lakes residents not to flush old meds (4/16/08) -- With trace amounts of pharmaceuticals showing up in the drinking water of major cities, authorities are encouraging consumers around the Great Lakes to drop off leftover and expired medicine at collection centers.
The Environmental Protection Agency has set a goal of collecting 1 million pills and 1 million pounds of electronics during an Earth Day initiative aimed at the more than 30 million people who live around the Great Lakes, which are by far the largest source of fresh drinking water on the planet.
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Maker of Vioxx Is Accused of Deception (4/16/08) -- Two teams of researchers with access to thousands of documents gathered for lawsuits over the painkiller Vioxx allege that Merck waged a campaign of deception to promote its drug, moving slowly to warn of possible hazards while at the same time dressing up in-house studies as the work of independent academic researchers.
The reports in today's Journal of the American Medical Association in effect accuse one of the world's biggest pharmaceutical makers of various forms of scientific fraud.
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Chemical found 'everywhere' may cause cancer, study says (4/15/08) -- A federal health panel Tuesday for the first time acknowledged concerns that a chemical found in thousands of everyday products such as baby bottles and compact discs may cause cancer and other serious disorders.
The draft report by the National Toxicology Program, an office of the National Institutes of Health, signaled a turning point in the government's position on bisphenol-a, or BPA, so ubiquitous in American society that it has been detected in the urine of 93 percent of the population over 6 years of age.
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Traditional acupuncture may ease migraines (4/14/08) -- Acupuncture, as practiced in traditional Chinese medicine, may offer some relief from migraine pain, a new study suggests.
Italian researchers found that regular treatments with "true" acupuncture helped improve symptoms in 32 patients whose migraines had been resistant to standard preventive medication.
Moreover, the therapy worked better than two forms of "sham" acupuncture used for comparison, the researchers report in the medical journal Headache.
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Yoga helps older women balance, stand taller (4/14/08) -- Elderly women showed measurable improvements in their walking speed and balance after a nine-week yoga program -- and they gained a centimeter in height, on average, Philadelphia researchers report.
"The only explanation may be that they are standing more upright, not so much crouching," study chief Dr. Jinsup Song of Temple University told Reuters Health. Song presented the findings April 4 at the Gait and Clinical Movement Analysis Society's Annual Meeting.
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Vitamin D And Calcium Influence Cell Death In The Colon, Researchers Find (4/13/08) -- Researchers at Emory University are learning how vitamins and minerals in the diet can stimulate or prevent the appearance of colon cancer.
Emory investigators will present their findings on biological markers that could influence colon cancer risk in three abstracts at the American Association for Cancer Research meeting in San Diego.
In a clinical study of 92 patients, supplementing diet with calcium and vitamin D appeared to increase the levels of a protein called Bax that controls programmed cell death in the colon. More Bax might be pushing pre-cancerous cells into programmed cell death, says Emory researcher Veronika Fedirko, who will present her team's results.
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Drinking May Raise Breast Cancer Risk (4/13/08) -- Alcohol, consumed even in small amounts, increases the risk of breast cancer and particularly estrogen-receptor and progesterone-receptor positive breast cancer, a new study shows.
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HAITI: Economy forces poor to eat dirt (4/10/08) -- It was lunchtime in one of Haiti’s worst slums, and Charlene Dumas was eating mud.
With food prices rising, Haiti’s poorest can’t afford even a daily plate of rice, and some take desperate measures to fill their bellies.
Charlene, 16 with a one-month-old son, has come to rely on a traditional Haitian remedy for hunger pangs: cookies made of dried yellow dirt from the country’s central plateau.
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Mobile phones 'more dangerous than smoking' (3/30/08) -- Mobile phones could kill far more people than smoking or asbestos, a study by an award-winning cancer expert has concluded. He says people should avoid using them wherever possible and that governments and the mobile phone industry must take "immediate steps" to reduce exposure to their radiation.
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Brief, High Doses Of Folate -- B Vitamin -- Blunt Damage From Heart Attack (3/27/08) -- Long known for its role in preventing anemia in expectant mothers and spinal birth defects in newborns, the B vitamin folate, found in leafy green vegetables, beans and nuts has now been shown to blunt the damaging effects of heart attack when given in short-term, high doses to test animals.
In a new study, an international team of heart experts at Johns Hopkins and elsewhere report that rats fed 10 milligrams daily of folate, also known as folic acid or vitamin B9, for a week prior to heart attack had smaller infarcts than rats who took no supplements. On average, researchers say, the amount of muscle tissue exposed to damage and scarred by the arterial blockage was shrunk to less than a tenth.
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Giant Antarctic ice shelf breaks into the sea (3/26/08) -- A vast hunk of floating ice has broken away from the Antarctic peninsula, threatening the collapse of a much larger ice shelf behind it, in a development that has shocked climate scientists.
Satellite images show that about 160 square miles of the Wilkins ice shelf has been lost since the end of February, leaving the ice interior now "hanging by a thread".
The collapsing shelf suggests that climate change could be forcing change much more quickly than scientists had predicted.
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