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Curious Test Reveals Dogs Have a Stunning Awareness of Themselves

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Dogs might not be able to recognize themselves in a mirror, but that doesn’t mean our pets don’t have some level of self-awareness. Recent research has shown dogs can recognize the unique smell of their own odor, sort of like looking in an ‘olfactory mirror’, and in 2021, a study found they might also have … Read more

Baby Receives Heart Transplant With a Life-Changing Twist to Counter Organ Rejection

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A baby in North Carolina has received a first-of-its-kind heart transplant that may prevent his body from rejecting the organ without the need for lifelong drugs to suppress the immune system.    The child, Easton Sinnamon, is the first person to receive a heart transplant along with implantation of thymus tissue from the same donor, according to a statement from Duke … Read more

Ageing: Your organs may age at different rates

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The organs in your body aren’t necessarily the same biological age, and tracking their individual ageing trajectories could help predict your risk of developing specific diseases Health 8 March 2022 By Carissa Wong Artistic illustration of the human kidneys Shutterstock / crystal light An analysis of hundreds of biological features strengthens the evidence that some … Read more

Huge Study Finds Blood Proteins That Could Increase Risk of Severe COVID

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Multiple factors play a role in complex diseases like COVID, and knowing what they are is important for predicting how different people will be affected. Early on in the pandemic, being older, overweight, or smoking were identified as increasing your risk of developing severe COVID. This then informed public health decisions – the elderly were … Read more

Extremely Hot, Humid Weather Could Kill a Person Far More Easily Than We Thought

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The human body might not cope with nearly as much heat and humidity as theory predicts. One of the first studies to directly assess humid heat stress among young people has found that when humidity is at an absolute max, the upper limit of human adaptability is just 31°C (87 °F).   That’s four degrees … Read more

In Mice, a Potential New Treatment Eradicates Ovarian And Colorectal Cancer in Days

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An experimental new type of cancer treatment has yielded some impressive results in mice: the eradication of advanced-stage ovarian and colorectal cancer in the animals as little as six days.   The new therapy has only been tested in mice so far, so let’s not get too excited just yet. However, the early signs are … Read more

There’s a Reason 90% of Drugs Fail Clinical Trials, And We Can Fix It

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It takes 10 to 15 years and around US$1 billion to develop one successful drug. Despite these significant investments in time and money, 90 percent of drug candidates in clinical trials fail.   Whether because they don’t adequately treat the condition they’re meant to target or the side effects are too strong, many drug candidates … Read more

Scientists Can Now Turn Stem Cells Into Bone Using Nothing More Than Sound

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Stem cells have the superpower of turning into any other kind of cell – a superpower that some animals use to regrow limbs; for medicine, they yield the potential to help us repair parts of the human body that have been damaged by injury or disease.   Carrying out those repairs requires the ability to manipulate stem … Read more

Getting More Sleep Can Help Your Body Absorb Fewer Calories, Experiment Shows

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New research has identified a possible way of shedding calories without closely monitoring diets or doing more exercise – simply by spending a little more time in bed, in fact.   In an experiment with 80 overweight adults who usually slept fewer than 6.5 hours a night, adding an average of 1.2 hours of extra … Read more