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: Ya-Ling Liou, D.C.
Most Eastern styles of medicine pay just as much attention to the patient’s state of mind as to the state of his or her tissues and organs. This insight and acknowledgment of the whole person rather than reducing us to our individual body parts is based on healing methods centuries old that survive because they work.
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- Written by: Richard Gunderman, Indiana University
In late July, an international team of researchers announced that they had identified evidence of cancer in the fossilized remains of a biological relative of human beings who lived about 1.7 million years ago.
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- Written by: Sergio Diez Alvarez, University of Newcastle
Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928 and revolutionised the treatment of bacterial infections. Ever since then we have been searching for new antibiotics to address the myriad of infections humans encounter and the growing risk of resistance to them.
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- Written by: Julia Evangelou Strait, Washington University in St. Louis
A new breast cancer study shows that tumors can mutate in response to treatments that reduce estrogen levels in the body.
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- Written by: Andrew Pollard, University of Oxford
Recent calls for the introduction of a vaccine against chickenpox (varicella-zoster virus infection) following a severe case of the disease in Cambridge, England may surprise many parents who consider the disease to be a mild illness that “everyone gets”.
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- Written by: Arch Mainous, University of Florida
Type 2 diabetes has reached epidemic proportions, with an estimated 29 million people in the U.S. having the disease and another 86 million considered prediabetic. With an estimated cost of US$245 billion, prevention becomes critically important to stem the tide of increasing diabetes prevalence.
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- Written by: Stan Steindl, The University of Queensland and James Kirby, The University of Queensland
Anger can be very quick, powerful, reactive, and can make us do things we typically wouldn’t do. There is nothing inherently wrong with anger as an emotion, but nowhere is anger less helpful, more common, and potentially more dangerous than when we are behind the wheel of a car.
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- Written by: David Orenstein-Brown
A new analysis of the medical records of more than 5.5 million older adults admitted to nursing homes between 2011 and 2014 shows that those with delirium face an increased risk of death. They’re also more likely to be readmitted to the hospital.
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- Written by: Bridget Hodkinson, University of Cape Town
The prevalence of gout is increasing worldwide. It has become the most common cause of inflammatory arthritis in men, and its prevalence in postmenopausal women continues to rise. This increase is due to changes in diet and lifestyle, increased use of certain diuretics and increasing obesity.
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- Written by: Louise Hickman, University of Technology Sydney and Jane Phillips, University of Technology Sydney
Admitting a loved one to a nursing home is a difficult decision and is usually only arrived at once the person’s care needs cannot be met by the family and community-based services. Dementia has profound consequences for the quality of life for those with the condition, their family and friends.
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- Written by: Kara Gavin, University of Michigan
Researchers are testing a non-drug pain treatment for people who are trying to overcome addiction.
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- Written by: Jamie T. Mullins, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Asthma is a chronic respiratory condition with no known cure. It impacts people of all ages through episodic constrictions of the airways, which may be even worse than it sounds.
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- Written by: Mark Michaud, University of Rochester
Scientists have identified an inner ear deficiency in children with autism that may affect their ability to recognize speech. The finding suggests that a hearing test could one day be used identify children at risk for the disorder at an early age.
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- Written by: David Orenstein, Brown University
The United States Preventive Services Task Force has released a report saying there isn’t enough evidence to recommend that clinicians perform visual screening for melanomas for patients with no known risk for the skin cancer.
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- Written by: Matthew Broome, University of Oxford
Manipulating the brain has been a tool used in the treatment of mental illness for centuries, and treatments have often been controversial.
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- Written by: Louisa Owens, University of Western Australia and Adam Jaffe, UNSW Australia
When a child is diagnosed with asthma, parents usually have a number of questions. How serious is asthma? Will the child grow out of it?
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- Written by: Marla Paul, Northwestern University
The number of new cases of metastatic prostate cancer climbed 72 percent from 2004 to 2013, but it’s unclear whether the rise is due to a recent trend of fewer screenings, the disease becoming more aggressive, or both.
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- Written by: Beth Darnall, Ph.D.
If you take prescription opioids, you may have experienced withdrawal symptoms at some point—perhaps when you forgot to take a scheduled dose of medication. Opioid withdrawal is highly unpleasant. If you experience withdrawal symptoms, this does not meant that you cannot get off opioids...
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- Written by: Chris Hammond, King's College London and Katie Williams, King's College London
Over the last century, myopia (short-sightedness) has risen to epidemic proportions. In South-East Asia nearly 90% of school leavers are now affected. In the West the figures are not as dramatic, but it appears to be similarly increasing.
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- Written by: Vardhman Rakyan, Queen Mary University of London
The most exciting recent development in human genetics research has been the ability to perform large-scale systematic studies of genetic variation in thousands of people.
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- Written by: Mike Williams, Rice University
What you say when a doctor asks how you feel is as good—or perhaps even better—than any test to predict long-term illness or death.
