A hallucinatory party drug could point the way to the first new treatments for depression in a generation. Scientists have discovered that ketamine (“Special K”), which club-goers take for dream-like highs, also improves mood disorders by repairing damaged connections in the brain. What’s more, ketamine works within hours as opposed to weeks— even for people whose mood disorders have proved […]
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A new study has found the strongest link yet between air pollution and autism, which experts now say affects one in 50 U.S. schoolchildren. Pregnant women who lived in areas with high levels of diesel exhaust and airborne mercury were found to be twice as likely to have a child with autism as those living in places with the lowest […]
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There has been a rise in teen suicides in the US. Researchers have found that the suicide rate goes up by a significant amount during the school year. They believe that school is taking its toll on the kids and making them think of ending it all. The age range of the highest numbers of suicide is from 12 to […]
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■ A star college athlete has turned down a chance at sporting glory to donate bone marrow to a stranger. Cameron Lyle, a shot-putter at the University of New Hampshire, added his DNA to the federal bone marrow registry two years ago and promptly forgot about it. But this month, he discovered his marrow matched that of a 28-year-old leukemia […]
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■ A Georgia college student faked his own kidnapping to avoid telling his parents he was flunking English. After receiving the F grade, Aftab Aslam, 19, texted his parents on behalf of a group of make-believe abductors, warning them not to call police or he would be killed. He camped out for eight days but came home when the weather […]
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There’s something more frightening than the kid-sized vampires, witches, and skeletons who will prowl the streets this Halloween: the paint on their faces.Gov’t officials called out the FDA for its lax regulations regarding face paints, which have been found to contain traces of spooky chemicals. “When it comes to the kind of makeup our kids slather on at Halloween, lead, nickel, and cobalt do […]
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Coffee is one of the most popular beverages in the world for lots of reasons, including that it gives people a pleasant lift in the morning. New research shows that it also helps their memory. Researchers had 160 people who were not regular coffee drinkers look at pictures of objects; five minutes later they gave them either a placebo or […]
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There is an opioid epidemic in the US which has contributed to the deaths of Americans. Approximately 1.5% of Americans have died from opioid overdoses which is more than the 1% of Americans who died in the Vietnam War. In the late 1990’s pharmaceutical companies assured medical institutions that opioids would not become addictive. So, with this information the medical […]
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A driver who parked his car taking up two parking spaces was treated to a series of very humorous passive-aggressive notes on his windshield. Irked motorists left a series of handwritten notes on the car after it was spotted sprawled across the two family parking spots at supermarket in West Bridgford, Nottingham. Kirk Ward, 28, snapped the shoddy parking and […]
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People tormented by a neverending flow of negative thoughts can greatly benefit from an alternative to expensive psychotherapy or medications: a walk in the woods. Psychologists at Stanford University found that walking outdoors in natural settings can ward off the human tendency to harp on that breakup, layoff, or family problem. The study involved 38 city participants, some of which […]
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