Health & Food

Paris, Jul 17: A revolutionary gene editing technique hailed as the future of disease eradication and mooted for a Nobel Prize may be less precise and cause more cell damage than previously thought, researchers said Monday. Lab experiments using mouse and human cells revealed that the CRISPR-Cas9 technique "frequently" caused "extensive" gene mutations, a study team reported. "This is the first...

Melbourne, Jul 8: Natural vibrations of cars make people sleepier, affecting concentration and alertness levels just 15 minutes after drivers get behind the wheel, a study has found. With about 20 per cent of fatal road crashes involving driver fatigue, researchers hope that their findings can be used by manufacturers to improve car seat designs to help keep drivers awake. The effects of physical...

Washington, Jul 8: Some popular smartphone apps may be secretly taking screenshots of your activity and sending them to third parties, a study has found. This is particularly disturbing because these screenshots - and videos of your activity on the screen - could include usernames, passwords, credit card numbers, and other important personal information, researchers said. "We found that thousands...

Jul 4: Minor strokes and “mini-strokes,” or transient ischemic attacks (TIAs), need early medical attention, just like major strokes, but a public education campaign in the UK had little success convincing the public to act fast after these events. “Although the campaign worked well for behavior after more major stroke, patients were still slow to act on, or ignored completely, the symptoms of...

New Delhi, Jun 30: From July 1, no private manufacturer will be allowed to manufacture Oxytocin for domestic use. Oxytocin is a naturally-occurring hormone that causes uterine contractions during labour and helps new mothers lactate. But its misuse is widespread in the dairy industry where livestock are injected with oxytocin to make them release milk at a time convenient to farmers. The hormone...

London, Jun 23: Normalisation of ‘plus-size’ body shapes lead to an increasing number of people underestimating their weight - undermining efforts to tackle the problem of obesity. While attempts to reduce stigmatisation of larger body sizes - for example with the launch of plus-size clothing ranges - help promote body positivity, the study highlights an unintentional negative consequence that may...

London, Jun 20: Marriage can help protect people from heart diseases or strokes, as well as reduce the risk of death from these conditions, a study claims. Published in the journal Heart, the study is the largest to date, with the age and ethnicity of the participants strengthening the wider applicability of the findings, researchers said. Previous research on the impact of marital status have...

Seoul, Jun 14: Sleeping for over ten hours or less than six hours a day is likely to cause metabolic syndrome – a cluster of conditions that increase the risk of heart disease, stroke and diabetes, a study has found. Researchers at Seoul National University in South Korea found that compared to individuals who slept six to seven hours per day, men who slept fewer than six hours were more likely to...

Washington D.C, Jun 11: HIV vaccine could soon be a reality. Researchers have found that Treg cells, a type of regulatory lymphocyte, might be protecting babies in the womb from getting infected with the HIV virus when the mother is infected. "Finding out what protects the majority of babies is important, as it can lead to ways to boost natural immune responses and make individuals resistant to...

Melbourne, Jun 11: Scientists have developed an app that uses a simulated digital nurse to teach patients how to recognise symptoms of heart attack and call emergency. Patients using the SAVE app are more likely to call an ambulance when they had symptoms and had fewer hospital admissions, researchers said. “Most deaths from heart attacks occur within the first few hours of symptom onset,” said...