Biology

Scientists have shown that resveratrol and resveratrol-like molecules may prolong life, but how might they do this?

-- Despite the fact that sleep is essential to our health, its function and what makes it necessary have remained mysterious. Over the years, scientists have accumulated data showing that sleep, or the lack thereof, affects the brain. Most of this work…

-- The idea that we could grow fuel from a renewable resource is incredibly exciting. Researchers have been hard at work developing biofuels that will allow us to run our society using easily renewable resources. These efforts have gained a lot of media…

-- Despite major advances in healthcare and disease prevention in the last hundred years, some of the most painful and serious non-infectious human diseases have eluded a cure. These are the so-called genetic diseases, in which a problem in a person’s…

-- Obesity and smoking are the two largest causes of premature death in the United States. Obesity causes over 160,000 preventable deaths per year, while cigarette smoking causes over 440,000. The list of diseases caused by obesity and smoking are…

The problem with pills Did you know that when you take a pill, the active ingredient in that pill diffuses throughout your entire body? When you have a headache you may take an over-the-counter pain medication, but this drug does not just concentrate in…

If you’ve watched the movie The Day after Tomorrow, you must remember the climate-related natural disasters that ravaged the human civilization. Though the events depicted in the movie are unrealistic, we are still dramatically altering Earth’s…

-- You may have recently heard of the first person to be cured of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the virus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). Timothy Ray Brown was HIV-positive and also had acute myeloid leukemia, a cancer that…

-- The past two decades have brought rapid advances in technology that have greatly influenced our daily lives. But have these technologies introduced new health risks along with new conveniences? Unfortunately, the development of electronic gadgets…

-- Hidden deep in the rural villages of sub-Saharan Africa, a neglected tropical disease called African sleeping sickness kills tens of thousands of people every year. Sleeping sickness is caused by a single-celled parasite named Trypanosoma brucei,…