Planets & Transits
New Moon in Leo August 12, 2026
The New Moon arrives in Leo August 12 at 8:36 PM UTC, and with it comes a singular...
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- Written by: Hayley Syrad, PhD candidate, UCL
The food and drink young children are consuming could be putting their health at risk. In a new study, published in the British Journal of Nutrition, we report that toddlers are consuming too much protein and too many calories for their age, putting them at risk of obesity in later life. We also found that
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- Written by: Diana Lutz, Washington University in St. Louis
"The idea that increased glucose uptake is a metabolic hallmark of cancer cells is deeply embedded in our thinking. It's the basis for how we diagnose cancer and manage its treatment in the clinic," says Gary Patti. Above: HeLa cells in culture.
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- Written by: Jennie Jackson, Lecturer in Human Nutrition and Dietetics, Glasgow Caledonian University
One British title chose to focus on a rather different story. “Walnuts prevent heart disease,” declared the Daily Express in a huge, front-page headline. It might have had retirees rushing to buy them by the sackful.
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- Written by: Katherine Gombay, McGill University
The researchers believe depression, metabolic symptoms, and the risk of developing diabetes interact in a number of ways. In some cases, a vicious cycle may emerge with depression and metabolic risk factors aggravating one another.
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- Written by: Don Campbell, University of Toronto
"It looks like acetaminophen makes it harder to recognize an error, which may have implications for cognitive control in daily life," says Dan Randles.
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- Written by: Mark Derewicz, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Can Long Lost Data Put Heart Healthy Oils To Rest?Randomized controlled trials—considered the gold standard for medical research—have never shown that linoleic acid-based dietary interventions reduce the risk of heart attacks or deaths.
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- Written by: Layne Cameron, Michigan State
"This is a global issue rather than one that's simply isolated in China; multidrug resistance is just a plane ride away," says James Tiedje.
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- Written by: Richard Steed, University of Copenhagen
"If an overweight person is able to maintain an initial weight loss—in this case for a year—the body will eventually 'accept' this new weight and thus not fight against it, as is otherwise normally the case when you are in a calorie-deficit state," says Signe Sørensen Torekov.
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- Written by: Sharron O'Neill, Researcher, International Governance and Performance (IGAP) Research Centre, Macquarie University
Lynch syndrome is a common, inherited condition that affects thousands of Australians and greatly increases the risk of developing cancer. Yet 95% of those who have it don’t know about it.
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- Written by: Havi Carel, Professor of Philosophy, University of Bristol
Serious illness is a great calamity. It is unwelcome, violent, frightening and painful. If it is life threatening, it requires the ill person and their loved ones to confront death. Illness causes pain, anxiety, incapacitation; it limits what the ill person can do. It can cut a life short, stop plans in their tracks, and detach people from life,
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- Written by: Andrew Lavender, Lecturer, Faculty of Health Sciences, Curtin University
Restless leg syndrome is a common affliction characterised by uncomfortable feelings in the legs accompanied by an irresistible urge to move the legs to relieve the sensations. People with restless leg syndrome often keep their legs moving by pacing or constantly moving their legs while sitting. The sensations commonly occur at
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- Written by: Erica Gies, Ensia
People in developed countries turn on the tap and safe drinking water flows, a dramatic health benefit they tend to take for granted. That complacency was dramatically disrupted last year when children in Flint, Michigan, started testing positive for lead poisoning and the source was traced to tap water.
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- Written by: Krishna Ramanujan-Cornell
Our study is the first to connect an insertion allele with vegetarian diets, and the deletion allele with a marine diet,. A genetic variation has evolved in populations that have eaten a plant-based diet over hundreds of generations, such as in India, Africa, and parts of East Asia.
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- Written by: Simon Graff, Research assistant, Institute for Public Health, Aarhus University
For decades, medicine has recognised the powerful way grief can influence the heart. It’s been called Broken Heart syndrome or Takotsubo cardiomyopathy and evidence that severely stressful life events increase the risk of acute cardiovascular incidence, like a heart attack,
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- Written by: Cynthia Lee-McGill University
A large portion of the seafood consumed in North America is farmed. But the food those fish eat increasingly includes more crop-based ingredients, like corn, soy, and wheat.
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- Written by: Amanda Barnier, Professor of Cognitive Science and Australian Research Council Future Fellow, Macquarie University
A new TV show would have us believe a powerful hypnotist can make us do whatever he says while we are powerless to resist or even realise. Channel Nine’s new game show You’re Back in the Room debuted to high ratings on Sunday night.
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- Written by: Lee Hamilton, Lecturer in Sport, Health and Exercise Science, University of Stirling
As a young child I recall my grandmother giving me the largest spoonfuls of cod liver oil, coaxing me with the promise of an equally large spoonful of golden syrup. It was probably a throwback to her own childhood when the post-war government sought to provide infants with a cod liver oil supplement.
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- Written by: Jo Abbott, Research Fellow / Health Psychologist, Swinburne University of Technology
Poor sleep can make us feel down, worried and stressed. So it’s no surprise that how well we sleep has a direct impact on our physical and mental health. Sleep problems such as insomnia are a common symptom of many mental illnesses, including anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
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- Written by: Gina Rippon, Professor of Cognitive NeuroImaging, Aston University
If you ask someone to name famous people (fictional or non-fictional) who are known for having autism or being “on the spectrum”, Rain Man is often the top favourite, possibly followed by Sherlock Holmes (especially in his recent incarnation by Benedict Cumberbatch). Sheldon in the Big Bang Theory is another.
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- Written by: Scott Harding, Visiting Senior Lecturer in Nutritional Sciences, King's College London
Nutritional guidelines and recommendations are constantly changing in the light of new research. It can be difficult to keep up with which foods are healthy and which aren’t. Here we look at five foods that have gone through the cycle of being the villains of nutritional science but are now, based on some old and some new science, apparently okay to eat again.
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- Written by: Stephen Euston, Professor, Heriot-Watt University
So much for the decades in which fats and oils were public enemy number one on our dinner plates. There is more and more evidence that sugar – or more precisely, carbohydrate – is behind our increasing rates of obesity and heart disease.
