Day February 4, 2016

PARIS –  An initial report into a drug trial in northwestern France that left one person dead and five others hospitalized last month did not identify the exact cause, French Health Minister Marisol Touraine said on Thursday. Touraine told a…

Contagious yawning has long been linked to empathy—we are more likely to yawn when someone we know yawns than when a stranger does. But now researchers in Pisa, Italy, have taken it a step further. They spent five years “surreptitiously”…

You may be naturally disposed toward being a morning person or a night owl—and scientists are now saying that may have a true biological basis that’s hard to fight, the Guardian reports. Per a study published Tuesday in Nature Communications,…

By Ruthy Munoz HOUSTON (Reuters) – An anti-abortion activist indicted for using a fake driver’s license ID to aid secret filming inside Planned Parenthood facilities turned himself into authorities in Houston on Thursday and was offered a probation deal, prosecutors…

By Sarah N. Lynch and David Ingram WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Former drug executive Martin Shkreli laughed off questions about drug prices and tweeted that lawmakers were imbeciles on Thursday, when he appeared at a U.S. congressional hearing against his…

(Changes slug, adds manager ‘no comment’) MILAN, Feb 4 (Reuters) – The latest news about the health of seven-times Formula One world champion Michael Schumacher is not good, his former Ferrari boss Luca di Montezemolo said on Thursday. The German…

MILAN (Reuters) – The latest news about the health of seven-times Formula One world champion Michael Schumacher is not good, his former Ferrari boss Luca di Montezemolo said on Thursday. The German is still receiving intensive treatment far from the…

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — A man accused of killing a former Dutch health minister admitted the slaying at a court hearing Thursday, claiming it was an “order from God” because she was responsible for the Netherlands’ euthanasia law. The…

By Matthias Blamont PARIS (Reuters) – An initial inquiry into a clinical drug trial that left one person dead and five others hospitalized in France last month found that the laboratory conducting the tests was slow to react when the…

Pursuing scientific or engineering careers in industry, government or private research after getting a Ph.D. used to be considered a one-way ticket out of academia. But new University of Washington research finds numerous benefits — to students, researchers and academic…

One million people across England and North Wales are now registered to book donation appointments online, making it one of the largest digital booking systems of any blood service in the world. NHS Blood and Transplant’s www.blood.co.uk website delivers a…

LivaNova PLC (NASDAQ:LIVN)(LSE:LIVN) (the “Company”), a global medical technology company and a leader in the treatment of cardiovascular diseases, today announced it has been granted approval from the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its innovative stented aortic…

Brazil’s health minister on Wednesday urged Latin American countries to work together in the fight against the Zika virus and said U.S. experts would arrive next week to begin work on finding a vaccine. Alarm is mounting over the virus’…

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Brazil is not sharing enough samples and disease data to let researchers determine whether the Zika virus is, as feared, linked to the increased number of babies born with abnormally small heads in the South…

NEW YORK (AP) — A sexually transmitted case of Zika in Texas has scientists scrambling to understand how much of a risk infection through sex is for the usually mosquito-spread illness. Experts still stress that mosquitoes are the main culprit…

The World Health Organization voiced concern on Wednesday over the reported sexual transmission of the Zika virus in Texas amid worries that such infections could make efforts to combat the virus linked to severe birth defects in Brazil even tougher.…

Pro Football Hall of Famer Troy Aikman is speaking out about his battle against melanoma, the most severe form of skin cancer. In 1998 the former Dallas Cowboys quarterback noticed a dark spot on his back shoulder and went to…

By Jeffrey Dastin (Reuters) – Major U.S. airlines United and Delta and Europe’s Lufthansa and Air France are offering to re-assign certain flight crew concerned about contracting the Zika virus from routes to affected countries. The previously unreported policies by…

By Ruthy Munoz HOUSTON (Reuters) – An anti-abortion activist indicted for using a fake driver’s license ID to aid secret filming inside Planned Parenthood facilities will present himself to a Houston court on Thursday and likely seek to have charges…

IMAGE: Examples of each pathology category and the 1-4 rating system are given along with a short description. view more Credit: Stilson et al. While rhino species evolved and increased in size over 50 million years, their bones may have strained…

New study in JAMA Internal Medicine demonstrates that text messages are a simple, affordable and effective mobile health strategy Text messages can double the odds of medication adherence in patients with chronic disease. That is the central finding of a…

New data published today in The Journal of Nutrition show that Bimuno®, a unique galacto-oligosaccharide (GOS), is functionally similar to human milk oligosaccharides (HMOS) by producing comparable anti-inflammatory intestinal protection. It is the first time a synthetic GOS has shown…

UCLA’s A. Janet Tomiyama. Credit: A. Janet Tomiyama Over the past few years, body mass index, a ratio of a person’s height and weight, has effectively become a proxy for whether a person is considered healthy. Many U.S. companies use…

This photo provided by ViaCyte shows the Encaptra delivery system, placed next to a quarter to give a size perspective. Johnson Johnson, continuing its long quest for a type 1 diabetes cure, has agreed that biotech company ViaCyte can acquire…

Paris (AFP) – Zapping worn-out cells in the organs of “middle-aged” mice caused the rodents to live longer, healthier lives, said a study Wednesday that raised intriguing prospects for anti-ageing treatments. Mice minus these aged or “senescent” cells went on…

By Ben Klayman DETROIT (Reuters) – A group of academics and activists on Wednesday called on Michigan Governor Rick Snyder to establish a compensation fund for victims of Flint’s lead-contaminated drinking water, with one member of the group proposing the…

PARIS (AP) — The Latest on the mosquito-born Zika virus, which is linked to brain deformities in babies (all times local): 11:50 p.m. Brazil’s president says Zika virus has gone from a “distant nightmare” to a “real threat” against the…

By Lisa Rapaport (Reuters Health) – Women who use in vitro fertilization (IVF) and other reproductive technologies may be more likely to have children with certain cancers or developmental delays than their peers who conceive the old-fashioned way, two new…

(Reuters) – President Barack Obama is set to unveil on Tuesday his budget proposal for fiscal year 2017, his final year in office. But since the Republican-controlled Congress controls the purse strings, much of Obama’s budget will likely stay on…

By David Ingram and Sarah N. Lynch NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Martin Shkreli, the former drug executive who raised the price of a lifesaving medicine by 5,000 percent, is set to appear as a witness at a congressional hearing on…

PITTSBURGH, Feb. 3, 2016 – Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine have shown that the core of the protein clumps found in the brains of people with Huntington’s disease have a distinctive structure, a finding that could…

IMAGE: Altering PCH1 levels changes the size and number of photoreceptor containing photobodies four hours after dusk in plants. view more Credit: Courtesy of Meng Chen from the University of California, Riverside. Dmitri A. Nusinow, Ph.D., assistant member at the Danforth…

London, UK (February 4, 2016). Diversity in the boardroom is key to advancing lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT)- inclusive polices, finds a study published by SAGE in the journal Human Relations, in partnership with The Tavistock Institute. Evidence suggests…

The most robust evidence yet, published today in the Cochrane Library, suggests that national smoking legislation does reduce the harms of passive smoking, and particularly risks from heart disease. The updated Cochrane review containing more up-to-date research found that countries…

SOUTH BURLINGTON, Vt. – Raise your spoons: Ben Jerry’s now has nondairy ice cream. The Vermont ice cream maker has created four flavors using a certified vegan almond milk base. Available are the classic Chunky Monkey and Chocolate Fudge Brownie…

RECIFE, Brazil — For the first time, a health emergency has been declared in the U.S. because of the Zika virus, which is suspected of causing birth defects. The governor of Florida put the emergency into effect in four counties,…

New questions are being raised about the clinical trial of a widely used heart drug, and critics are calling for an independent investigation, after a medical device used during the study was later found to be faulty and recalled. The…

WASHINGTON — Congress is looking into why veterans are being denied a cure for a deadly form of hepatitis. In a CBS News investigation, we told you the cure was developed by a doctor working for the Department of Veterans…

This article originally appeared on Inverse. By Jacqueline Ronson Hopefully this doesn’t come as a surprise to you: The world “natural” on a food label means literally zilch. No one is policing what the word means, or who can and…

This article originally appeared on Inverse. By Yasmin Tayag You ever get hauled in for a crime, you better hope you can claim a sleepwalking defense. Last year, for one, a man in North Carolina was acquitted of the murder…