Milk is well known as a great dietary source of protein and calcium, not to mention an indispensable companion to cookies. But "nature's perfect food," a label given to milk over time by a variety of boosters, including consumer activists, government nutritionists and the American Dairy Council, has become a great source of controversy, too. The long-running dispute over whether milk, both from cows and goats, should be consumed in raw or pasteurized form--an argument more than a century old--has heated up in the last five years, according to Bill Marler , a Washington State lawyer who takes raw milk and other food poisoning cases. [More] Raw Milk - Milk - Pasteurization - United States - Health

Pox Swap: 30 Years After the End of Smallpox, Monkeypox Cases Are on the Rise

The ancient scourge smallpox was relegated to biowaste bin of history more than 30 years ago, the result of the world's first and only successful disease eradication programs. Since then, however, cases of monkeypox--a serious, although less severe smallpoxlike illness--have substantially increased in central Africa, according to a study published August 30 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . The authors stress that better surveillance and a thorough assessment of the public health threat posed by this once-rare viral infection are needed."I'm concerned about monkeypox," says Don Burke director of the Center for Vaccine Research at the University of Pittsburgh, who wasn't involved in the study. "It isn't going to emerge as pandemic tomorrow, but could at any time start to increase its transmission. It's worrisome. This is the type of warning siren we need to take very seriously." [More] Africa - University of Pittsburgh - Smallpox - Central Africa - Public health

Shaky Ground: Can Seismologists Be Charged with a Crime for Not Predicting Deadly Quakes?

The adage “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” does not quite capture the following pair of situations. It’s more like “damned if you could (but you can’t), damned if you couldn’t (but you kind of did).”First, the “damned if you could (but you can’t)”. On April 4 at 3:40 p.m., a magnitude 7.2 earthquake rocked Baja, Mexico, and was felt well north. The event elicited the following post on Twitter 16 minutes later from New Age lifemeister Deepak Chopra: “Had a powerful meditation just now--caused an earthquake in Southern California.” (Lawrence Krauss, too, lays into Deepak on page 36 for his lack of understanding of quantum physics. There’s plenty to bust Chopra about.) [More] Mexico - Southern California - Earthquake - New Age - California

Rabbit Rest: Can Lab-grown Human Skin Replace Animals in Toxicity Testing?

It likely comes as no surprise that many common household chemicals and medical products as well as industrial and agricultural chemicals, may irritate human skin temporarily or, worse, cause permanent, corrosive burns. In order to prevent undue harm regulators in the U.S. and beyond require safety testing of many substances to identify their potential hazards and to ensure that the appropriate warning label appears on a product. Traditionally, such skin tests have been done on live animals--although in recent decades efforts to develop humane approaches , along with ones that are more relevant to people have resulted in new models based on laboratory-grown human skin.The most recent chapter of this ongoing effort was written on July 22 when the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)--an international group that, among other things, provides guidelines to its 32-member countries on methods to assess chemical safety--officially approved three commercially available in vitro models of human skin for use in chemical testing. Specifically, the new guideline ( OECD Test No. 439 ) stipulates that the models can serve as an alternative to animals in tests for skin irritation, one of several human health endpoints for which chemicals are tested. Similar 3-D models were approved for corrosion tests in 2004, leaving many hopeful that soon it may be possible to the assess the full spectrum of a chemical's effects on human skin--from irritation to corrosion--without using live animals. [More] United States - Health - Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development - Medicine - Irritation

What Are Bedbugs? Are They Dangerous? [Re-post]

Editor's note: This article originally appeared on February 27, 2009. We are re-posting it because of current concern about bedbugs. NEW YORK--Sleep tight and don't let the bedbugs bite? If only . The creepy critters have become such a nuisance here that the city council is mulling legislation that would establish a bedbug task force, ban the sale of used mattresses, train exterminators, and regulate mattress disposal. Just how infested is Gotham? According to the New York Daily News , there were 22,218 complaints to the city's 311 hotline about infestations of the blood-sucking hemipterans, a 34 percent jump since this time last year. [More] NEW YORK - New York City - United States - Bedbug - Daily News

The Deepening Crisis: When Will We Face the Planet's Environmental Problems?

With this final column I will transition Sustainable Developments from Scientific American to the home page of the Earth Institute ( www.earth.columbia.edu ). Although I will continue to contribute occasional essays to the magazine, I will use this last regular column to say thank you and take stock of the deepening crisis of sustainable development.During the four years of this column, the world’s inability to face up to the reality of the growing environmental crisis has become even more palpable. Every major goal that international bodies have established for global environmental policy as of 2010 has been postponed, ignored or defeated. Sadly, this year will quite possibly become the warmest on record, yet another testimony to human-induced environmental catastrophes running out of control. [More] Sustainable development - Environment - Earth - The Earth Institute - Environmental policy

Functional motor neuron subtypes generated from embryonic stem cells

Scientists have devised a method for coaxing mouse embryonic stem cells into forming a highly specific motor neuron subtype. The research provides new insight into motor neuron differentiation and may prove useful for devising and testing future therapies for motor neuron diseases.

Novel nanotechnology collaboration leads to breakthrough in cancer research

A multidisciplinary group of researchers has produced a 3.6-angstrom resolution structure of the human adenovirus. Scientists are working with adenovirus as a vector for gene therapy, but have needed better structural information.

Hair provides proof of the link between chronic stress and heart attack

Researchers have provided the first direct evidence using a biological marker, to show chronic stress plays an important role in heart attacks. The scientists developed a method to measure cortisol levels in hair providing an accurate assessment of stress levels in the months prior to an acute event such as a heart attack.

Iron deficiency in heart failure

Iron deficiency is a relatively common nutritional disorder that affects more than one third of the general population, and is often associated with chronic diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease, Parkinson's disease, rheumatoid diseases and renal failure. New research has demonstrated that iron deficiency also affects at least one-third of non-anaemic chronic heart failure patients.

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