Mountain lions living in Greater Los Angeles could be at risk of extinction within the next 50 years if the population remains isolated by freeways and other forms of human development, UCLA and National Park Service wildlife ecologists are warning.
About 15 pumas survive in the Santa Monica Mountains,...
How long has life flourished on our planet?
A new study suggests it could go back more than 3.7 billion years.
In a study published Wednesday in Nature, a team of Australian researchers describe small conical structures that may have been built by microorganisms less than a billion years after...
The Food & Drug Administration is issuing strong new warnings that the combined use of opioid medications and benzodiazepines, a class of anti-anxiety medications better known by such commercial names as Xanax and Ativan, can dangerously suppress breathing and cause coma or death.
The drug safety...
Call it artificial intelligence with a human touch. This week, two California universities separately announced new centers devoted to studying the ways in which AI can help humanity.
USC’s Viterbi School of Engineering and its School of Social Work said Wednesday that they had joined forces...
In the search for a treatment capable of changing the course of Alzheimer’s disease, new findings are offering a rare glimmer of hope: In a preliminary trial of subjects suffering from memory and thinking problems or diagnosed with early Alzheimer’s, a bioengineered medication called aducanumab...
Women seeking medical abortions in Ohio experienced a higher rate of complications after the state implemented a law that put new restrictions on doctors who performed the procedure, according to a study published Tuesday.
The law, which took effect in 2011, requires abortion providers to adhere to...
Hey, yoga lovers – your numbers in the U.S. are growing.
There has been a dramatic increase in the number of yoga practitioners in the United States – up to 36.7 million from 20.4 million in 2012, according to a study conducted by Yoga Journal and Yoga Alliance.
And the study predicts that 80 million...
It’s the coldest case in science, and it may have just been cracked.
Forty years after researchers discovered Lucy, an early human ancestor who lived 3.2 million years ago, scientists think they now know how she died.
After examining high-resolution CT scans of broken bones in Lucy’s right shoulder, as...
The nation’s pediatricians are pushing back against parents who resist having their children vaccinated against a broad range of dangerous diseases by calling on states to stop offering waivers to those with non-medical objections to the practice.
In a policy statement issued Monday, the American...
A full-scale replica of the next-generation Orion crew spacecraft, tipped at a 90-degree angle, hung from cables 40 feet in the air from the huge, historic gantry at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.
At the close of a 15-second countdown, the capsule swung left.
Then, with a bang from...
Animation simulates how Lucy may have died after a fall from a tall tree.
Spacecraft don’t get to sleep in on the weekend—and neither do their scientists. On Saturday at 5:51 a.m. Pacific, NASA’s Juno spacecraft will swing within roughly 2,500 miles of Jupiter’s cloud tops, the closest it will get to the gas giant during its planned mission.
It will also be the first...
On any given Saturday morning, they gather on the beach off Hurricane Street in Marina del Rey to practice the ancient discipline of yoga.
The class begins and ends with meditation to the sounds of crashing surf, the occasional flyover by a Los Angeles County sheriff’s helicopter and beachgoers...
Happenings in and around L.A. wellness circles:
Yin yoga is one of the least intimidating methods of the practice. It’s basically long, slow stretches to bring on a state of relaxation. An introductory workshop Saturday at Culver City-based Goda Yoga will show how Yin and Gong Yoga (the sounds...
All blood donated in the U.S. should be screened for Zika to prevent the virus from spreading through transfusions, the Food and Drug Administration said Friday.
The new guidance should be implemented “immediately” in states and territories where the virus is already being spread by mosquitoes,...
Our future robot overlords never looked so squishy. A team of scientists led out of Harvard University have managed to build an entirely soft robot — one that’s inspired by an octopus.
The octobot, described this week in the journal Nature, could pave the way toward more effective soft robots that...
It says a lot about Yvette Nicole Brown that, when asked for the contact details for her reps, she instead scribbled down her own number.
It's that down-to-earth and approachable demeanor that her fans and followers find so relatable, first on the cult hit “Community” and now on “The Odd Couple,”...
Why is it that some people crave several cups of coffee a day while others stop at only one or two?
A growing body of evidence suggests that the amount of coffee we consume is determined by our genetic makeup rather than the amount of sleep we got the night before.
Coffee is one of the most popular...
Believe it or not, there are upsides to getting older.
Yes, your physical health is likely to decline as you age. And unfortunately, your cognitive abilities like learning new skills and remembering things is likely to suffer too.
Despite such downsides, research suggests that your overall mental...
Pale blue dot, meet pale red dot. Astronomers have spent decades scouring the skies looking for Earth-sized planets around distant stars. And now they’ve found one, sitting smack in the habitable zone of our nearest stellar neighbor.
The planet Proxima b, described in the journal Nature, could...
Cancer has surpassed heart disease as the leading cause of death in California and 21 other states, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
That total is in stark contrast to the situation at the start of this century, when only two states — Alaska and Minnesota...
With freewheeling summer months behind children and school and organized sports just ahead, new research offers some sobering news about the potential for long-term cost when a child’s brain is hurt.
In a study that tracked the life trajectories of more than a million Swedes, young people who sustained...
Can Americans tax themselves out of their obesity crisis? A new analysis of Berkeley’s first-in-the-nation “soda tax” offers encouraging results about its power to change people’s dietary habits.
Five months after the city implemented its penny-per-ounce tax on all manner of sugar-sweetened beverages,...
Doctors have an important message for musicians: Don’t forget to clean your instruments. It could be a matter of life and death.
Their warning was inspired by a 61-year-old British bagpipe player who developed a dry cough and breathlessness that worsened over a period of seven years. His condition...
For women older than 50 who have been confused by conflicting advice on how frequently to get a mammogram, some new science is here to guide their decisions.
An ambitious research effort published Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine set out to tailor women’s breast cancer screening practices...
Back in the 1970s, when my mom wanted to lose weight, she turned to her palm-sized calorie counter book. She dutifully looked up, wrote down and added up the calorie counts for all the things she ate each day.
I, on the other hand, can use an app on my smartphone for dieting help.
I can use one...
Don’t give up on your fitness New Year’s resolutions just yet — there’s help as close as your smartphone.
“Information on food and exercise has become so available and free on the Internet it’s completely transformed people’s approach to wellness and has liberated the client from being at the gym,”...
This video explains how satellite imagery and machine learning can be combined to map poverty around the world.
Has any hip-hop artist ever been better suited to score a yoga class than Drake, that most sensitive of rappers, that King of Feels? The creators of Namasdrake don’t think so.
The brainchild of DJ and event promotor T.J. Petracca (co-founder of Ride or Cry Collective/Emo Night) and DJ and yoga...
He is a dancer-choreographer recognized the world over: Derek Hough, 31, has won a record six trophies on “Dancing With the Stars,” and two Emmys for choreography. But when he’s not dancing with the stars or making appearances on “Nashville,” you might see him around town leading flash workouts...
You can get a pretty good idea of a country’s wealth by seeing how much it shines at night — just compare the intense brightness of China and South Korea to the dark mass of North Korea that’s sandwiched between them.
But nighttime lights don’t tell you which neighborhoods or villages within a...
It’s not every day you get to see a star go nova. Scientists at Warsaw University Observatory in Poland have managed to catch a binary star system both before and after its explosive flash.
The findings, described in the journal Nature, confirm a long-held theory about novae known as the hibernation...
A new way to measure how humans age suggests that Latinos withstand life’s wear and tear better than non-Latino Caucasians, and that they may have their Native American ancestors to thank for their longer lives.
The new findings offer some insight into a longstanding demographic mystery: that despite...
What does the 5,300-year-old man wear?
Brown bear hats, goat leather leggings, roe deer quivers and striped jackets made from an assortment of sheep hides, according to a study published Wednesday in Scientific Reports.
The new work presents the most detailed analysis yet of the many garments...
Nearly three-quarters of Californians who didn’t have health coverage before the Affordable Care Act are now insured, yet many are still concerned about their medical expenses, according to a report released Thursday.
A Kaiser Family Foundation survey tracking the state’s uninsured population found...
What if you could design a drug that has all the pain-relieving power of morphine but none of its dangerous or addictive side effects?
Scientists have spent years trying to do just that, and on Wednesday, they unveiled one of their most promising compounds yet — a chemical concoction they dubbed...
A tiny, unseen force could potentially alter our basic understanding of the universe – if it really exists. Theoretical physicists at UC Irvine say they’ve found evidence for a fifth fundamental force of nature, carried by a particle that until now has gone totally unnoticed.
If supported by the...
Just eight months after West Africa’s Ebola epidemic was declared extinguished, researchers are reporting a curious and potentially revealing fact about the deadly viral infection: It was less likely to kill people who were also in the grips of malaria infection.
At a treatment center run by Doctors...
Acetaminophen, long the mainstay of a pregnant woman’s pain-relief arsenal, has been linked to behavioral problems in children born to mothers who used it during pregnancy.
Research published Monday by the journal JAMA Pediatrics found that a woman’s use of acetaminophen at 18 and 32 weeks of pregnancy...
For the first time, scientists using data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft have identified liquid methane flowing through canyons carved into Saturn’s moon, Titan.
The findings, described in Geophysical Research Letters, fill in a picture of Titan as an increasingly dynamic, geologically fascinating...
Health officials in Los Angeles and Orange counties are racing to vaccinate gay men for meningitis, as a growing outbreak in the region appears to be hitting them particularly hard.
Orange County health workers launched evening pop-up clinics at gay bars, night clubs and LGBT centers. At the first...
Sky watchers agree: It was totally worth staying up all night to watch the 2016 Perseid meteor outburst.
NASA officials counted up to 170 meteors per hour at the peak of the outburst early Friday morning.
“Our meteor cameras saw over 160 Perseids brighter than planet Jupiter,” said Bill Cooke, head...
Actor Josh Duhamel ditched his leading-man look for a scraggly beard and vintage uniform to play a down-on-his-luck baseball player in “Spaceman,” opening in theaters and on VOD Aug. 19.
Based on a true story, the film begins in 1982 on the day that Bill “Spaceman” Lee was released by the Montreal...
Geographically, walking in Long Beach is like strolling along the Marina Peninsula near Venice, but with more affordable housing, friendlier people and plenty of free parking. The city of Long Beach even provides public restrooms and drinking fountains.
1. Begin this walk south of downtown Long...
When Bridget Dome wanted to get back in shape after her pregnancy, she headed to the sand with another new mom, Sibylle Postley, to try some beach volleyball.
“Quickly, I was hooked,” Dome said. “Then I had to gear up.”
The friends, who had met playing indoor volleyball and knew the sport was a...
There’s no question that Margot Robbie was in stellar shape for DC blockbuster “Suicide Squad.”
She had to be, with character Harley Quinn’s costume consisting of little more than sequined hot pants, a crop top and a baseball bat.
“It was the world’s smallest costume,” says her celebrity trainer...
Not long ago, foxes native to the Channel Islands off the California coast teetered on the edge of extinction.
They have rebounded to the point where U.S. wildlife officials on Thursday removed three subspecies of island fox from the roster of federally endangered species, hailing their comeback...
In the frigid waters of the sub-Arctic ocean lurks a mysterious and slow-moving beast known as the Greenland shark. It’s a massive animal that can grow up to 20 feet in length. Now, new research suggests it may have a massive lifespan as well.
According to a paper published Thursday in Science,...
This year’s installment of the Perseid meteor shower is expected to deliver a double dose of shooting stars streaking across the night sky.
The celebrated cosmic show — which will reach its maximum intensity in the early hours of Friday morning — is known for the high number of spectacular meteors...
