Category: Health

Two American manufacturers unveiled a new recipe on Thursday for PFAS and plastics-free packaging for everything from burgers to salads, in a bid to make takeout food more sustainable and safer for consumers. While the companies—Zume and Solenis—are not the first to design a grease-resistant, PFAS-free food container, this is the first time that manufacturers… Continue reading Manufacturers make PFAS-free food packaging recipe available to all

Major disruptions to our health and quality of life are front of mind in an era when wildfires, floods, and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic impact Earth’s population daily. Amid these glaring threats, the slow but rising creep of air and water pollution that humans encounter and even ingest may be easy to overlook, but research… Continue reading Common environmental pollutants damage mucus structure, function: Air, water contamination disrupts body's first line of internal defense

Researchers identify two sugar-binding proteins that impede the viral entry of circulating SARS-CoV-2 variants. The team, spearheaded by researchers at IMBA — Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences — may have found the “Achilles’ heel” of the virus, with potential for pan-variant therapeutic interventions. The findings are now published in the… Continue reading Neutralizing the SARS-CoV-2 sugar coat

People infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, are known to shed it in their stool, even if they aren’t experiencing any symptoms. With that in mind, University of California San Diego School of Medicine researchers have been screening wastewater from campus buildings for signs of the virus since the summer of 2020, thinking… Continue reading Most of UC San Diego's COVID-19 cases detected early by wastewater screening

Several North Carolina residents charge in a new lawsuit that hospital chain HCA Healthcare has raised costs and lowered quality after it fully acquired Mission Health in 2019. The lawsuit filed in a local court on Tuesday alleges that HCA is cutting staff and costs at “an alarming rate” and leaves Western North Carolina with… Continue reading Lawsuit charges HCA operating hospital monopoly in North Carolina

Researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center have found that people recovering from COVID-19 and those vaccinated against the causative virus, SARS-CoV-2, produce identical clones, or groups, of antibody-producing white blood cells. Their discovery, reported this week in the journal Cell Reports, sheds light on the selection pressures driving the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 variants that have… Continue reading Shared antibodies may push COVID-19 variants, study finds

The coronavirus that causes COVID-19 has demonstrated a stubborn ability to resist most nucleoside antiviral treatments, but a new study led by an Iowa State University scientist could help to overcome the virus’s defenses. The study, published recently in the peer-reviewed journal Science, details the structure of a critical enzyme present in SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus… Continue reading New study details enzyme that allows coronavirus to resist antiviral medications

What is enough? Put that question to any economist or politician, and you are likely to get a blank stare in return. In a society devoted to continuous economic growth, there is no way to answer the question, “How much is enough?” because continuous growth implies there is never enough.   However, given the current… Continue reading Enough for Everyone

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — The groundwater of at least nine military installations near the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland and Virginia is contaminated with high levels of toxic fluorinated “forever chemicals,” according to a report Wednesday by an environmental group that cites Defense Department records. The Environmental Working Group’s report focuses on installations along the bay… Continue reading Group cites chemical concerns at military sites near bay

The permanence of frozen ground in the Arctic is no longer guaranteed as Earth’s temperatures continue to climb. But how much the degradation of so-called permafrost will worsen climate change is still unclear, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC’s) Sixth Assessment Report, released this week. The uncertainty leaves researchers with a frustrating… Continue reading How Much Worse Will Thawing Arctic Permafrost Make Climate Change?