Health, features and articles | Educational Science

Aug 31, 2008

Boss' Gender Can Affect Workers' Stress

Bosses in general can be a pain in the … well, you know, but a new study finds that your boss’ gender can affect just how much pain he or she seems to inflict. Researchers at the University of Toronto used data from a 2005 national telephone survey of working...

Aug 31, 2008

At Home, Women Rule

Men might strut their stuff on Wall Street and on Capitol Hill, but across America women wield the power on the home front. A survey by the Pew Research Center, announced today, finds that among 43 percent of couples the woman makes more of the decisions in the domestic realm...

Aug 31, 2008

Even Viruses Catch Viruses

Among pathogens, viruses are unique in their collective ability to infect all types of organisms. There are plant viruses, insect viruses, fungal viruses, and even viruses that infect only amoeba and bacteria. Now a group of researchers at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in France has made the...

Jul 31, 2008

Why Shocking Images Stick in Short-Term Memory

You’d probably remember seeing a man with pink hair more than you could recall the guy walking next to him with brown hair. That’s because our brains best remember attention-grabbing images, according to a new study. Previous research has implied an upper limit to the number of visual images a...

Jul 31, 2008

Girls' Most Dangerous Sport: Cheerleading

For high school girls and college women, cheerleading is far more dangerous than any other sport, according to a new report that adds several previously unreported cases of serious injuries to a growing list. High school cheerleading accounted for 65.1 percent of all catastrophic sports injuries among high school females...

Jul 31, 2008

The Pill Makes Women Pick Bad Mates

Birth-control pills could screw up a woman's ability to sniff out a compatible mate, a new study finds. While several factors can send a woman swooning, including big brains and brawn, body odor can be critical in the final decision, the researchers say. That's because beneath a woman's flowery fragrance...

Jul 31, 2008

Small Packages Trick People to Eat More

If you think buying junk food in small packages will help you eat less, look out —marketers know the truth. Two new marketing studies found that some people tend to consume more calories when junk food portions and packages are smaller. For some, it's because they perceive small packages to...

Jun 30, 2008

Outdoor BBQ: A 700,000-year-old Ritual

July Fourth is a celebration of outdoor cooking, as well as our nation's birthday. It's time to brush off the barbecue and throw masses of processed meat on the grill. As we all stand around waiting for the fire to die down so that we can make s'mores, it's also...

Jun 30, 2008

Breakthrough: Artificial DNA Could Power Future Computers

Chemists claim to have created the world's first DNA molecule made almost entirely of artificial parts. The finding could lead to improvements in gene therapy, futuristic nano-sized computers, and other high-tech advances, the Japanese researchers say. DNA, popularly illustrated as a double helix, holds the blueprints of life and controls...

Jun 30, 2008

How Baseball Is Rigged For Lefties

In the general public, about 10 percent of people are left-handed. In Major League Baseball, about 25 percent of players are lefties. Any serious fan knows some of the reasons why certain positions favor lefties, but David Peters has come up with a laundry list of reasons to explain this...

Jun 30, 2008

Ulcers Discovered in Mummies

Two Mexican mummies had ulcers when they were alive. Remnants of the bacterium Helicobacter pylori were discovered in gastric tissue from the mummies, human remains believed to predate Columbus' discovery of the New World. It is only through the use of the stomach tissue of these incredible mummies that we...

Jun 30, 2008

The Future of Babies: Artificial Wombs and Pregnant Grandmas

Artificial wombs and experiments on human embryos grown in the lab will be commonplace and no big deal ethically in 30 years, several scientists predict. They envision a scenario just like test-tube babies, which shocked us 30 years ago but now are fairly routine and acceptable to most people. That...

May 31, 2008

Key to All Optical Illusions Discovered

Humans can see into the future, says a cognitive scientist. It's nothing like the alleged predictive powers of Nostradamus, but we do get a glimpse of events one-tenth of a second before they occur. And the mechanism behind that can also explain why we are tricked by optical illusions. Researcher...

May 31, 2008

Pigs Pack Human Pathogens

Here's mud in your eye: Pigs raised without antibiotics in an effort to placate consumer fears over those chemicals carry more bacteria and parasites, which of course consumers fear in the wake of the tomato scare and beef, chicken and spinach contaminations of days gone by. At least this is...

May 31, 2008

How Stress and Diet Cause Heart Attacks

Word of Tim Russert's death at 58 shocked many Americans today, and behind the grief came nagging questions about heart attacks, like the one that struck the newsman, and anxiety about how they kill. Russert's death came in a week when the government reported U.S. life expectancy had risen to...