As cases of meningitis, a rare and potentially fatal disease, popped up in cities nationwide over the past several years, public health officials noticed a trend: many of those infected were gay men.
There’s no known medical reason why meningitis, which is transmitted through saliva, would spread...
In spite of the flowing gouges they leave behind, gullies on the Red Planet may not have been formed by liquid water, according to data from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
The findings, described in Geophysical Research Letters, showcase the complexity of Martian geology and highlight how...
Florida likely has the first cases of Zika transmitted by mosquitoes on the U.S. mainland, the state's governor said Friday.
No mosquitoes in the state have tested positive for Zika, but one woman and three men in Miami-Dade and Broward counties likely contracted the virus through mosquito bites,...
“Are you bikini ready?”
That all-too familiar headline — as well as variations on it — could be headed for extinction.
Women’s Health magazine announced that it’s banning this kind of “outdated” terminology from its cover.
Media outlets should not be complicit in “body shaming” and promoting a...
Zendaya isn’t just a rising star. The 19-year-old doesn’t shy away from speaking up against injustice, including using her social media platform to give voice to the #BlackLivesMatter movement, calling out stereotyping (and needless photo retouching) and challenging her generation to get out and...
You probably think you’re too young to have a hearing problem, right?
Maybe not.
Everyday lifestyle habits — such as plugging in your earbuds and rocking out to you new downloads — can “age” your ears prematurely.
Here are the two simple ways to know whether you’re potentially doing damage to your...
The days of using alcohol or peroxide — ouch! — to flush a cut or scrape and then letting it air dry so it scabs over is … well, old school.
So is putting ice, butter or aloe on a burn.
“I hear all of this every single day in our wound care center,” says Dr. Kazu Suzuki, director at Tower Wound...
Bad news would-be astronauts: Traveling into deep space could be bad for your heart.
In a study published Thursday in Scientific Reports, researchers found that astronauts who went to the moon were almost five times more likely to die of cardiovascular disease than astronauts who remained in low-Earth...
How many species of wolves live in America? A new study suggests there is just one.
The new work, published Wednesday in Science Advances, finds that the gray wolf is the one true wolf in the United States. The red wolf, which lives in the Southern U.S., and the eastern wolf, now found primarily...
Scientists scanning Jupiter’s atmosphere have found a mysterious spike in temperature high above the Great Red Spot — that massive, swirling storm that has graced the planet’s face for centuries.
The discovery, described in the journal Nature, may hint at a deeper connection between the dynamics...
The ALS Association is crediting money raised through the Ice Bucket Challenge for the discovery of a gene's connection to the progressive disease.
Those who accepted the challenge allowed buckets of ice water to be dumped on their heads to raise awareness and money for ALS.
The challenge became...
Scientists say a tiny endangered fish found in lagoons and streams along the California coast belongs to two separate species.
The tidewater goby, a 2-inch translucent fish, survives in relatively isolated populations from Del Norte County down to San Diego. The fish spend most of their lives in...
Your mother told you early and often not to stick your finger up there. But scientists say they have reached into the human nose and picked out something really special — a potential new medicine to combat the dreaded MRSA bacteria.
If the authors of a new report have their way, teams of researchers...
A federal task force that assesses the value of medical screening tests says it can't judge whether skin-cancer checks by dermatologists are worth the trouble for healthy Americans because good research on the practice is lacking.
The finding of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force is not a...
Sometimes it’s what’s missing that really stands out. Scientists using data from NASA’s Dawn mission have found that the dwarf planet Ceres seems to completely lack any giant impact craters, even though it has plenty at smaller sizes.
The findings, described in the journal Nature Communications,...
Health officials in Los Angeles and Orange counties are recommending that all gay and bisexual men receive meningitis vaccinations, amid an outbreak of the potentially fatal disease disproportionately affecting men who have sex with men.
Local health departments were previously recommending vaccinations...
Dolly the sheep, the world’s first clone of an adult animal, died in middle age. But a new study makes the case that the extraordinary circumstances of her birth did not play a role in her untimely death.
After examining more than a dozen cloned sheep old enough to be considered senior citizens —...
More than a dozen athletes have dropped out of the 2016 Olympic games in Rio de Janeiro citing fears of spreading the Zika virus, but a new study from researchers at Yale University finds that the international sporting event poses little risk of increasing the transfer of the virus around the...
When African Americans and Latinos are stopped and questioned by police, they are no more likely to be killed or seriously injured than are white people drawn into similar encounters with the police, says a new study.
But African-Americans and Latinos – especially men –are far more likely than...
If you’re intent on keeping dementia at bay, new research suggests you’ll need more than crossword puzzles, aerobic exercise and an active social life. In a study released Sunday, researchers found that older adults who did exercises to shore up the speed at which they processed visual information...
You know that blinding tension headache you get after a long, annoying day at the office?
Yoga Medicine founder Tiffany Cruikshank says this stretch “is a nice, quick fix.”
What it does
Activates a series of “trigger points” along the back of the neck that contribute to tension headaches. Also...
Your bed is supposed to be the place where you can rest your weary head and let the day’s worries fade away.
But some heath and environmental activists fear our beds — and sofas and other household products — could be making us sick.
At issue are chemical materials that can be found in some vinyl...
Who’s calling the shots now? After nearly four years on the job, NASA’s Curiosity rover is finally making certain scientific decisions on its own. The Martian explorer now picks some of the rock targets to blast with the laser on its ChemCam instrument.
A software upgrade known as AEGIS allows...
When you think about a pool workout, you probably think “swimming.”
Think again.
Industry giant Speedo USA is trying to reposition its brand as the source of fitness inspiration and workouts, not just swimwear and swim-related accessories.
The newly launched Speedo Fit is making the case for...
Being a champion doesn't mean winning every race. It's also about character, bouncing back from setbacks, and continuing to move toward your goal. Natalie Coughlin, 33, is a 12-time Olympic medalist, three of them gold, but didn't make the cut for the Rio Olympic Games in August.
"I'm bummed I'm...
It’s official: Scientists with the Large Underground Xenon dark-matter detector have combed through 20 months of pristine data and found, buried deep in the measurements ... nothing out of the ordinary.
The findings, presented at the Identification of Dark Matter conference in Sheffield, England,...
In the dark, oxygen-free zone of your large intestine there is a community of microbes that help you digest food, fight off harmful pathogens, and which may even affect your mood and emotions.
Now, a new study suggests that this intimate relationship between our microbes and ourselves is older...
The honey-hunter lets out a long trill, followed by a sharp grunt.
Brrr-hm!
On cue, a small bird flies to the hunter and responds with its own chattering noise. The greater honeyguide flits from tree to tree, searching for a beehive.
Over thousands of years, honeyguides, named for their unusual...
At least a dozen GOP staffers from California’s delegation to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland are experiencing vomiting, cramps and diarrhea, and the dreaded norovirus is tentatively being blamed for their gastrointestinal misery.
Erie County Health Department officials have been...
Using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, an international team of scientists has tracked two planets crossing in front of the same star at the same time -- discovering that these worlds are both rocky and have comparatively thin atmospheres.
The findings, described in the journal Nature, lend growing...
NASA’s Kepler spacecraft has pulled in the largest crop of confirmed exoplanets ever found by the K2 mission – a triple-digit trove that includes a star system with four small planets that may be rocky, like Earth.
The 104 worlds, described in the Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, bolster...
Your eyes may be more sensitive than you ever thought possible.
In a study published Tuesday in Nature Communications, researchers report that our warm, wet, multicellular eyes have evolved such a high level of sensitivity that they can, on occasion, detect a single photon aimed at the retina.
...Experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Infection are investigating a worrisome case of Zika virus transmission after the caregiver of a Zika-infected patient who died was found to be infected as well.
In late June, an elderly Utah resident who had visited a country where the Zika virus...
The gravitational tug between the sun and moon is not just a dance of high and low tides: It can also trigger a special kind of earthquake on the San Andreas fault.
This phenomenon has fascinated scientists for years. Like sea levels, the surface of the Earth also goes up and down with the tides,...
In the hills and wooded areas of the Los Angeles area, mountain lions remain a constant, yet mostly unseen, presence.
But the predators may come closer to human areas to hunt than we previously realized, according to a recent study by UCLA and the National Park Service.
The study, published in...
It is widely acknowledged that the dinosaurs were obliterated by the massive Chicxulub asteroid smashing into Earth around 66 million years ago — yet the exact details of what caused the extinction have remained a mystery.
Now scientists have a new theory about how that catastrophe caused the demise...
A New York City woman infected her male partner with Zika virus through sex, the first time female-to-male transmission of the germ has been documented.
Zika is usually spread by mosquitoes, and health officials have known for some time that men can spread it through sex. The Centers for Disease...
“Modern Family” star Sofia Vergara is no stranger to having the spotlight put on her physique. (She’s the face of Covergirl’s Bombshell makeup collection.) The actress, producer and entrepreneur just launched her new perfume, Tempting, and spent a few moments chatting with us about why overall...
Love them or hate them, beets are earning a second look.
Body builders and endurance athletes are downing juice shots to boost performance. Chefs are stirring purées into antioxidant-rich chocolate desserts for a superfood double-play. Food manufacturers are making snacking healthy with dehydrated...
If you’re looking to scratch “run a marathon” off your bucket list, you’re not short on options. Several half-marathons and marathons are coming up in the Los Angeles area, including the Long Beach marathon and half-marathon in October, the Pasadena half-marathon in January, the Surf City half-marathon...
The open ocean around San Diego, Hawaii and Peru generates at least $17-billion worth of resources each year, according to a study by San Diego researchers.
Published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science, the study calculated values for items sold on the market, such as fish, but also quantified...
Scientists have discovered an ancient population of farmers from the eastern part of the Fertile Crescent, and their existence is a strong sign that agriculture was invented more than once, a new study says.
Bones and teeth from four human skeletons clearly show that these people were eating domesticated...
Researchers modeling the rampant spread of the Zika virus say that, like a wildfire consuming a parched landscape, the epidemic that has caused a plague of birth defects in Brazil is already showing signs of slowing and is likely to largely burn itself out in three years.
Peak Zika spread may already...
The gene that makes some people more vulnerable to Alzheimer’s disease as adults also affects the brain development and mental abilities of children, a new study shows.
Researchers who examined brain scans of 1,187 kids and teens found distinct patterns in the size and structure of the cortex,...
When it comes to musical aesthetics, beauty is in the ear of the beholder. A new study finds that people who haven’t been exposed to Western music don’t find certain “discordant” sounds unpleasant at all.
The findings, described in the journal Nature, show that Western musical sensibilities aren’t...
One of the surest ways to prevent the spread of HIV is to use condoms during sex. But that doesn’t always happen, especially when medicines are keeping the virus at very low levels.
Is this safe?
Health experts are divided on the question. In 2008, a national commission in Switzerland gave HIV-positive...
A new underwater microscope allows scientists to take their lab right to the bottom of the ocean, where they can get up close and personal with coral and other sea life to see how they behave in their own watery domain.
This high-powered tool, described in a paper published Tuesday in Nature Communications,...
Whether you call them gingers, the devil’s spawn or just-plain sexy, be sure to call redheads out of the sun because along with their fiery tresses comes a powerful propensity to develop melanoma, a particularly deadly form of skin cancer.
And now, scientists are beginning to uncover why redheads...
Imagine that it’s the mid-1960s, and NASA has hired you to help put a man on the moon.
Flying a spacecraft is incredibly complicated. If the trajectory is even one degree off during reentry, everyone on board could die. Human error is a serious risk. So what do you do?
Simple: You write some software...
