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TAMPA, United States (AFP) — Dogs can be trained to sniff out certain cancers, people at risk of a diabetic coma and now, children with malaria just by smelling their socks, researchers said Monday. According to the findings presented at the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene annual meeting in New Orleans, dogs were trained to sniff out malaria parasites in African children who tested positive for the mosquito-borne disease but did not have […]
GENEVA, Switzerland (AFP) — Despite an exceptionally snow-filled winter, Swiss glaciers have lost 2.5 percent of their volume this year, according to a report Tuesday which dubbed 2018 “a year of extremes”. This year’s record-breaking temperatures have greatly contributed to the loss of “a fifth of (the glaciers’) volume over the past decade”, according to the annual study on the state of the glaciers, published by the Swiss Academies of Science. And this despite the […]
HONG KONG, China (AFP) — New research in Hong Kong has found that UV filters commonly used in sunscreen are polluting surrounding waters and could endanger human health, one of the city’s leading universities said Thursday. An “extensive amount” of seven common UV filter chemicals was found in Hong Kong seawater as well as in fish, shrimps and mussels on aqua-farms, scientists from Hong Kong Baptist University told reporters. “The effect of these contaminants passing […]
by Kerry SHERIDAN Agence France Presse TAMPA, United States (AFP) — NASA is poised to launch Saturday its most advanced space laser ever, ICESat-2, a $1 billion dollar mission to reveal the depths of the Earth’s melting ice as the climate warms. The half-ton satellite, about the size of a smart-car, is scheduled to blast off atop a Delta II rocket on September 15 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The 40-minute launch window […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — Ever feel like it’s 7 am, even though the clock says 9 am? A team of researchers at Northwestern University said Monday they have designed a blood test that can measure a person’s inner body clock within 1.5 hours, an advance that may help personalize medical treatments in the future. The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer-reviewed US journal. The “circadian […]
by Hazel WARD Agence France-Presse PARIS, France (AFP) — The bonnethead shark, a small member of the hammerhead family, was long thought to be a strict carnivore that would occasionally ingest greens purely by accident. Not so, scientists said Wednesday. The bonnethead follows an omnivorous diet in which seagrass plays a key, nutritional role. Although researchers have long known that Sphyrna tiburo eats copious quantities of seagrass, it was not believed to absorb any nutrients from […]
CAIRO, Egypt (AFP) — One of the oldest villages in the Nile Delta has been discovered after archaeologists unearthed artifacts dating to the fifth millennium BC, Egypt’s antiquities ministry has said. Remains of the village were uncovered by a French-Egyptian team at Tel Samara, in northeastern Egypt, the ministry said Sunday. Similar structures dating to the period between 4,200 BC and 2,900 BC “have never been found in that region,” said Ayman Ashmawy, the ministry’s […]
by Kerry SHERIDAN Agence France-Presse TAMPA, United States (APF) – Researchers have found a new way that global warming is bad for the planet: more hungry bugs. Rising temperatures will stimulate insects’ appetites — and make some prone to reproducing more quickly — spelling danger for key staples like wheat, corn and rice which feed billions of people, researchers said Thursday. And since these three crops account for 42 percent of the calories people eat […]
by Marlowe Hood Agence France-Presse PARIS, France (AFP) — Rising levels of carbon dioxide in the air threaten to sap wheat, rice, and other staple grains of valuable nutrients, raising the specter of mass malnutrition, researchers warned Monday. On current trends, higher CO2 concentrations could reduce iron, zinc and protein levels in the crops that feed the world by up to 17 percent by mid-century, they reported in the journal Nature Climate Change. “Hundreds of […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP)–Fish oil supplements do not help prevent heart attacks or strokes in people with diabetes, said a study Monday that adds to a growing body of research on the ineffectiveness of pills containing omega-3 fatty acids. More than 15,000 people with diabetes but no signs of heart disease enrolled in the study in Britain, the results of which were published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Half the participants were given […]
PARIS, France (AFP) — Middle-aged people who get roughly half their daily calories from carbohydrates live several years longer on average than those with meat-heavy low-carb diets, researchers reported Friday. The findings, published in The Lancet medical journal, challenge a trend in Europe and North America toward so-called Paleo diets that shun carbohydrates in favor of animal protein and fat. Proponents of these “Stone Age” diets argue that the rapid shift 10,000 years ago — […]
TAMPA, United States (AFP) – Need another reason to hate plastics piling up in the environment? A study in the journal PLOS ONE on Wednesday found that degrading plastics emit powerful greenhouse gases like methane and ethylene, and are a previously unaccounted-for source of these heat-trapping pollutants. Plastic water bottles, shopping bags, industrial plastics and food containers were all tested as part of the study. The “most prolific emitter” was polyethylene, which is used in […]
