My father was married twice before I was born, once to a woman I met much later and once to my mother. When he asked me to speak in August at the reception of his third wedding, I believed it something I was incapable of doing: What could a son say about marriage to a…
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Three years ago, my mother sent me a text that read, “Gramma Gert: 3, Jake: 0” — the joke being that her 80-year-old mother, Gert, was getting married for a third time while I, at 28, was still single. But the odder twist — too strange to joke about, perhaps — was that Gert’s soon-to-be-husband…
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Boston, MA — Chemical compounds found in skin creams and other personal care products can cause an allergic reaction in the skin, a common condition known as allergic contact dermatitis (ACD). While ACD is on the rise, particularly in industrialized countries, exactly how personal care chemical compounds trigger a reaction remains unknown. Most allergic reactions…
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Some of the effects of air pollution on health are well documented -lung cancer, stroke, respiratory diseases, and a long etcetera- but for others there is less scientific evidence. Such is the case of bone health: there are only a few studies and results are inconclusive. Now, a study in India led by the Barcelona…
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Allergic reactions in the skin can be caused by many different chemical compounds found in creams, cosmetics, and other topical consumer products, but how they trigger the reaction has remained somewhat mysterious. A new study suggests the way some chemicals displace natural fat-like molecules (called lipids) in skin cells may explain how many common ingredients…
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The world scientific community is waging a difficult and prolonged war on cancer. New research in the field of immunogenic cell death can extend the area of drugs application and ensure patients’ protection from relapse after therapy. Cancer treatment is not just the removal of the tumor cells from the body, and chemotherapy. The doctors’…
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An experimental study found that long-term consumption of lingonberry juice lowers high blood pressure and improves the function of blood vessels. At some point in their lives, many people develop elevated blood pressure, even hypertension and functional disturbances in blood vessels related to low-grade inflammation. In addition to drug therapies, nutrition has a key role…
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A new expert review confirms that diet significantly influences mental health and wellbeing, but cautions that the evidence for many diets is comparatively weak. This, the most up to date overview of the new field of Nutritional Psychiatry, is produced, by the Nutrition Network of the ECNP and is published in the peer-reviewed journal European…
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One in every 15,000 children is affected by Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS), a complex, genetic endocrine condition caused by a disorder of chromosome 15. It’s non-inheritable, meaning the condition isn’t passed down from a family member. Among the regular side effects like growth hormone deficiency, hypothyroidism, delayed puberty, behavioral problems and learning difficulties, but hyperphagia is…
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Both species, humans and chimpanzees, can be extremely territorial, and territorial disputes between groups can turn violent, with individuals killing each other. In humans, such between-group competition can escalate to war and devastating loss of human life. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology studied wild Western chimpanzees to find out whether territorial…
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