■ A star college athlete has turned down a chance at sporting glory to donate bone marrow to a stranger. Cameron Lyle, a shot-putter at the University of New Hampshire, added his DNA to the federal bone marrow registry two years ago and promptly forgot about it. But this month, he discovered his marrow matched that of a 28-year-old leukemia […]
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Eddyville, Ky A prison doctor and two other staffers at the Kentucky State Penitentiary have been fired after a mentally disturbed inmate starved himself to death. James Kenneth Embry, 57, who had three years left on a nine-year drug sentence, was found dead in his cell in Eddyville in January. Embry started behaving erratically last spring when he stopped taking […]
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Spending evenings in front of a glowing computer, TV, or cellphone screen can put you at risk of depression, Science News reports. Nighttime exposure to light from gadgets has already been shown to contribute to insomnia, cancer, obesity, and diabetes. Now, a new study shows that screen glow can cause mood-related changes in the brain. For weeks, researchers exposed hamsters […]
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A new study has found the strongest link yet between air pollution and autism, which experts now say affects one in 50 U.S. schoolchildren. Pregnant women who lived in areas with high levels of diesel exhaust and airborne mercury were found to be twice as likely to have a child with autism as those living in places with the lowest […]
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It’s official: Abortion for gender selection is widespread in Britain, said Dominic Lawson. An analysis by The Independent shows that women from Indian and Pakistani communities in Britain are aborting their female fetuses at much higher rates than male fetuses, “resulting in the ‘disappearance’ of up to 4,700 girls.” Of course, this is what we should have expected, given that […]
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People who use sleeping pills regularly are far more likely to die prematurely than those who don’t, according to a new study. Researchers compared the health records of more than 10,000 sleeping-pill users with those of other patients of similar ages and health histories who didn’t use the drugs. They found that the heaviest sleeping-pill users were five times more […]
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■ Griffin Furlong has been fighting an uphill battle, but this week the 18-year-old graduated as ”class valedictorian” after his mother to leukemia when he was 6, Furlong spent two years in a homeless shelter with his father and brother. “It was horrible,” he said. “A kid should not have to go through that.” A month ago, just before final […]
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A devastating disease caused by airborne fungal spores is colonizing the Southwest in what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls “a silent epidemic.” The disease, coccidioidomycosis, or valley fever, strikes more than 20,000 people per year in the region, 10 times the number it did 15 years ago. The spores live in the soil until wind lifts them […]
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The number of children diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is exploding, raising concerns that doctors are overprescribing powerful drugs to kids and teens. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention The diagnosis rate of the disorder has soared 41 percent in the U.S. over the past decade. More than one in 10 school-age children have been diagnosed […]
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A scary new trend among college students combines starvation with binge drinking, says TheAtlantic.com. Researchers say “drunkorexia” now affects as many as one in four college students, who diet all day so that they can drink at night without gaining weight. In one recent study of 22,000 students at 40 universities, those who reported working out or dieting to shed […]
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