Health & WellnessS


Question

Colorado: Tap-Water Salmonella Inquiry Narrows

ALAMOSA, Colo. - Officials said Monday they have ruled out wastewater contamination, disgruntled workers and terrorism as sources of salmonella bacteria in drinking water that have sickened more than 200 people.

Heart

Medicine's Cutting Edge: Re-Growing Organs

Imagine re-growing a severed fingertip, or creating an organ in the lab that can be transplanted into a patient without risk of rejection. It sounds like science fiction, but it's not. It's the burgeoning field of regenerative medicine, in which scientists are learning to harness the body's own power to regenerate itself, with astonishing results. Correspondent Wyatt Andrews brings you to the scientific frontier.


Alarm Clock

UK: Recruitment drive as mentally ill teachers asked back to school

Teachers who have been declared unfit to work in the classroom are being approached in a "desperate" recruitment drive to fill vacancies in key subject areas, the National Union of Teachers said yesterday.

Eye 1

Narcissism: College students think they're so special

NEW YORK - Today's college students are more narcissistic and self-centered than their predecessors, according to a comprehensive new study by five psychologists who worry that the trend could be harmful to personal relationships and American society.

"We need to stop endlessly repeating 'You're special' and having children repeat that back," said the study's lead author, Professor Jean Twenge of San Diego State University. "Kids are self-centered enough already."

Smiley

Students turn a profit from candy sales

VICTORVILLE - With candy sales banned on school campuses, sugar pushers are the latest trend at local schools. Backpacks are filled with Snickers and Twinkees for all sweet tooths willing to pay the price.

"It's created a little underground economy, with businessmen selling everything from a pack of skittles to an energy drink," said Jim Nason, principal at Hook Junior High School in Victorville.

Bulb

Schizophrenia memory differences

People with schizophrenia use different areas of their brain to process some short-term memories, research suggests.

The finding by US scientists might help explain why the condition is often linked with enduring memory problems.

The study, by Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, found healthy subjects used the right side of the brain to remember specific locations.

Image
©Unknown
The scans showed up areas of activity in the brain

Briefcase

Children's Memory May Be More Reliable Than Adults' In Court Cases

The U.S. legal system has long assumed that all testimony is not equally credible, that some witnesses are more reliable than others. In tough cases with child witnesses, it assumes adult witnesses to be more reliable. But what if the legal system had it wrong?

Researchers Valerie Reyna, human development professor, and Chuck Brainerd, human development and law school professor--both from Cornell University--argue that like the two-headed Roman god Janus, memory is of two minds--that is, memories are captured and recorded separately and differently in two distinct parts of the mind.

Monkey Wrench

Activist, recipient seek to 'inspire' with controversial transplant

A long-suffering Canadian woman with a new lease on life, and the Christian activist from Australia who gave up one of his kidneys to save her, say they want to "inspire" the world with their controversial transplant - performed Thursday in Cyprus after a Toronto hospital refused to do the operation last year on ethical grounds.

Ashwyn Falkingham
©Australian Broadcasting Corp.
Ashwin Falkingham

Bulb

Shining a light on fluorescent bulbs

Compact fluorescent light bulbs, long touted by environmentalists as a more efficient and longer-lasting alternative to the incandescent bulbs that have lighted homes for more than a century, are running into resistance from waste industry officials and some environmental scientists, who warn that the bulbs' poisonous innards pose a bigger threat to health and the environment than previously thought.

People

Hyper girls 'struggle as adults'

Hyperactive young girls are more likely to have "serious" problems in adulthood, research suggests.

A study of more than 800 girls up to the age of 21 found hyperactivity was linked to poor job prospects, abusive relationships and teenage pregnancy.