Lead: Toxicological Profile, Pollution Aspects and Remedial Solutions

Why Is It So Bad to Pop a Pimple?

It’s tough to resist squeezing a juicy pimple. You probably want to get rid of it quickly and may feel like you know exactly how to do it after having watched hundreds of pimple-popping videos online. Dermatologists get the temptation, but say you should leave your zits alone. . continue reading

Economic burden of childhood verbal abuse by adults estimated at $300 billion globally

Childhood verbal abuse by adults costs society an estimated $300 billion (£239 billion) a year globally, show findings presented at the first international conference on childhood verbal abuse, hosted by UCL, Words Matter and the World Health Organization (WHO).. continue reading

How to Make a Self-Care Checklist That Actually Works for You

Self-care doesn’t look the same for everyone, however. Your go-to approach for managing stress may not help your best friend. And even partners in close, healthy relationships tend to have different needs for things like companionship, exercise, and leisure time.. Continue reading

Lack of focus doesn’t equal lack of intelligence — it’s proof of an intricate brain

A study by neuroscientists at Brown University’s Carney Institute for Brain Science illustrates how parts of the brain need to work together to focus on important information while filtering out distractions.. continue reading

The Role of Physics in Medicine

What is Medical Physics? Medical physics is a branch of applied physics that utilizes physical sciences to prevent, diagnose, and treat human diseases. Medical physics can be categorized into multiple sub-groups: medical imaging physics, radiation oncology physics, non-ionizing medical radiation physics, nuclear medicine physics, medical health physics, and physiological measurements.. Continue reading

Sports help kids develop important trait linked to adult success

Here's another good reason for kids to participate in organized sports: They can develop the 'grit' that helps them overcome challenges as adults, a new study suggests. Grit is defined as the combination of passion and perseverance that helps people achieve their long-term goals. This new research found that adults who played sports as a kid scored higher on a measurement of grit than adults who didn't play at all or said they quit.. Continue reading

Can food be medicine? Pros and cons

“Food as medicine” may be an emerging concept in the Western world but has existed for centuries as the cornerstone of health for many cultures around the globe. However, the role of diet and food in disease prevention and management compared to conventional medicine has been questioned.. Continue reading

Too Much Information, Too Little Time

Wait. What? Often, we miss something that we wanted to see, hear, or feel - especially when there is a lot of information competing for our attention. We mostly notice this problem when we try to make the brain process lots of information at high speed. Imagine for instance that you are playing a video game and browsing the internet while checking text messages on your phone.. Continue reading

What science still doesn’t know about the five senses

In the 1970s, psychologist Diana Deutsch discovered an audio illusion that made her feel like her brain was a little bit broken. “It seemed to me that I’d entered another universe or I’d gone crazy or something ... the world had just turned upside down!”. Continue reading

Secrets of Early Animal Evolution Revealed by Chromosome ‘Tectonics’

Large blocks of genes conserved through hundreds of millions of years of evolution hint at how the first animal chromosomes came to be. Chromosomes, the bundles of DNA that star in the mitotic ballet of cell division, play a leading role in complex life. But the question of how chromosomes came to exist and evolve has long been discouragingly hard to answer.. Continue reading

How painting can transform communities

Artists Jeroen Koolhaas and Dre Urhahn create community art by painting entire neighborhoods, and involving those who live there -- from the favelas of Rio to the streets of North Philadelphia. What's made their projects succeed? In this funny and inspiring talk, the artists explain their art-first approach -- and the importance of a neighborhood barbecue.. Continue reading

Art Should Be a Habit, Not a Luxury

If someone asked whether you like the arts, you’d probably say you do — at least in theory. According to the advocacy group americans for the arts, more than two-thirds of u.S. Adults say the arts “lift me up beyond everyday experiences.” still, only 30 percent attended a concert of any type in 2017; 23 percent went to an art museum; 6 percent attended a literary event. Fewer than half actively created art of any kind.. Continue reading

New Research Advances the Treatment of Chronic Pain

Opioid peptides are small proteins that mediate pain relief and emotions, including euphoria, anxiety, stress and depression, by interacting with four classical receptors (“molecular switches”) in the brain.. Continue reading

Memory details fade over time, with only the main gist preserved

For this study the researchers developed a simple computerised task that measures how fast people can recover certain characteristics of visual memories when prompted to do so. Participants learned word-image pairs and were later required to recollect different elements of the image when cued with the word.. Continue reading

Warmer climate may make new mutations more harmful

A warmer global climate can cause mutations to have more severe consequences for the health of organisms through their detrimental effect on protein function. This may have major repercussions on organisms' ability to adapt to, and survive in, the altered habitats of the future.. Continue reading

What is the science of mangoes

A perfectly ripe mango is an absolute marvel of nature. There are not enough Michelin stars to award the tree named Mangifera indica. No chef on the planet can concoct a dish that is such an ethereally perfect combination of sweetness, sourness, aroma, texture and just sheer joy. To truly appreciate this, one needs to understand why plants make fruits in the first place.. Continue reading

Trip frequency is key ingredient in new law of human travel

An analysis of mobile-phone tracking data has revealed a universal pattern that describes the interplay between the distances travelled by humans on trips and the frequency with which those trips are made.. Continue reading

Endless scrolling through social media can make you sick

When a dark ashy cloud born from wildfires settled over the Seattle metropolitan area, Jack Riewe was among the millions of people suddenly trapped indoors. It was September 2020, and without access to the outdoors during a pandemic, it became even more difficult for the 27-year-old writer to see other people.. Continue reading

The future of psychedelic science

From treating depression to understanding consciousness, the promise of psychedelics is shifting their study from fringe to frontier neuroscience. In 2019 a small group of researchers at Imperial established the world’s first dedicated centre for research into the action and clinical use of psychedelic compounds.. Continue reading

Mammals Can Use Their Intestines to Breathe

Researchers show that both mice and pigs are capable of oxygenating their blood via the colon—a capacity that, if shared by humans, could be leveraged in the clinic to minimize the need for mechanical ventilation.. Continue reading

Nature can be as engaging as video games

We don’t need to invest in outdoor equipment or an expensive vacation to get started, according to Sampson, also the author of How to Raise A Wild Child. We just need to notice what’s around us, even if we live in a city. “Too often these days, we walk right past amazing natural events,” he says. “It could be a butterfly on a branch, a hawk hunting silently overhead, it could be a beautiful evening sky.. Continue reading

Happiness really does come for free

The researchers set out to find out how people rate their subjective well-being in societies where money plays a minimal role, and which are not usually included in global happiness surveys. They found that the majority of people reported remarkably high levels of happiness.. Continue reading

The DNA regions in our brain that contribute to make us human

With only 1% difference, the human and chimpanzee protein-coding genomes are remarkably similar. Understanding the biological features that make us human is part of a fascinating and intensely debated line of research. Researchers at the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics and the University of Lausanne have developed a new approach to pinpoint, for the first time, adaptive human-specific changes in the way genes are regulated in the brain.. Continue reading

Loneliness makes our brains crave people

A hungry brain craves food. A lonely brain craves people. A new brain study demonstrates this. After being isolated, it shows, people’s brains perked up at the sight of other people. The action was in the same brain region that revs up when a hungry person sees food.. Continue reading

Musicians have brains with stronger connections than non-musician

Years of musical training shape the brain in dramatic ways. A minority of musicians — with Mozart and Michael Jackson in their ranks — also possess absolute pitch, the ability to identify a tone without a reference. But, it remains unclear how this ability impacts the brain.. Continue reading

3 science-based strategies to increase your creativity

The term “hacking” has a bad name. It comes out of coding and refers to someone trying to gain control over a computer system, typically for nefarious purposes. The word then morphed a bit, becoming pop culture shorthand for a “quick fix” or a “shortcut.”

None of those definitions apply here. First, the system we’re trying to gain control over is our own neurobiology. Second, when it comes to sustained peak performance, there are no shortcuts.. Continue reading

Study analyses hormone seasonality in humans

A recent study has provided researchers with a dataset of millions of hormone tests from medical records that shows seasonality with a winter-spring peak in hormones for reproduction, growth, metabolism, and stress adaptation. The hormone seasonality indicates that, like other animals, humans may have a physiological peak season for basic biological functions.. Continue reading

Teaching pupils empathy measurably improves creative abilities

Teaching children in a way that encourages them to empathise with others measurably improves their creativity, and could potentially lead to several other beneficial learning outcomes, new research suggests.. Continue reading

Watching decision making in the brain

In the course of deciding whether to keep reading this article, you may change your mind several times. While your final choice will be obvious to an observer -- you'll continue to scroll and read, or you'll click on another article -- any internal deliberations you had along the way will most likely be inscrutable to anyone but you.. Continue reading

Afternoon napping linked to better mental agility

As people age, their sleep patterns change, with afternoon naps becoming more frequent. But research published to date hasn't reached any consensus on whether afternoon naps might help to stave off cognitive decline and dementia in older people or whether they might be a symptom of dementia.. Continue reading

Yoga shown to improve anxiety, study shows

Led by researchers at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, a new study found that yoga was significantly more effective for generalized anxiety disorder than standard education on stress management, but not effective as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), the gold standard form of structured talk therapy that helps patients identify negative thinking for better responses to challenges.. Continue reading

Is it better to give than receive?

Young children who have experienced compassionate love and empathy from their mothers may be more willing to turn thoughts into action by being generous to others, a University of California, Davis, study suggests. In lab studies, children tested at ages 4 and 6 showed more willingness to give up the tokens they had earned to fictional children in need when two conditions were present -- if they showed bodily changes when given the opportunity to share and had experienced positive parenting that modeled such kindness.. Continue reading

How the brain helps us navigate social differences

Our brain responds differently if we talk to a person of a different socioeconomic background from our own compared to when we speak to someone whose background is similar, according to a new imaging study by UCL and Yale researchers. . Continue reading

Living environment may be key to longevity

When it comes to living to the ripe old age of 100, good genes help but don't tell the full story. Where you live has a significant impact on the likelihood that you will reach centenarian age, suggests a new study conducted by scientists at Washington State University's Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine.. Continue reading