Culture

Apple CEO Tim Cook has released the much anticipated Apple watch – his company’s first new product since the iPad. Cook said the new watch, in addition to telling the time, was a “comprehensive health and fitness companion”. But we’re unlikely to hear much about how people will actually use this new product for some time.

Would you want to know if you or your children had risk of hereditary cancer, a genetic risk for cardiovascular disease or carried the gene associated with developing Alzheimer's disease - even if they were risks that wouldn't be relevant for possibly decades or didn't have a cure?

Using a small amount of blood or saliva, a technology called whole genome sequencing makes that possible - and more than half of parents said they'd not only be interested in the technology for themselves but for their children too, a new nationally-representative University of Michigan study shows.

Although children can emerge from cold and neglectful family environments as adults with high self-esteem, a new University at Buffalo psychology paper suggests they may still be at a relative disadvantage in life, with a foggier sense of identity. Yet obviously adults with low self-esteem who grew up in the same type of negative environment have relatively high self-clarity, so what gives?

A new paper finds that peer review managers play an important role in identifying potential conflicts of interest (COI) in biomedical research grant peer reviews.

All week I’ve been intrigued and inspired by posters appearing in my department that depict truly great scientists, mathematicians and engineers. Few of them were known to me or my fellow students, yet their achievements include revolutionizing algebra, developing the first treatment for leukemia, and discovering fundamental processes in physics.

Walmart recently did something that will help its employees, which may very well benefit all lower- and middle-income workers in this country. The “something” is not the wage increase its lowest-paid workers will soon receive. Instead, the thing that Walmart did that should help lower-paid workers was to announce that it was doing anything at all.

Last summer, major US comics publisher Marvel reincarnated one of its most popular characters, Thor, as a woman. Predictably, this prompted an avalanche of opinion, both positive and negative.

The positive reaction celebrated that the new character would provide a lead female role in a predominantly male cast of superheroes within mainstream comics. Mainstream comics desperately needed a new role model for the growing number of young comics readers – many of who are female.

Fast food ads aimed at kids fail to de-emphasize toy premiums, making them deceptive by industry self-regulation standards. They also fail to emphasize healthy menu items, investigators at Dartmouth-Hitchcock's Norris Cotton Cancer Center have found. The research was published in the March 4 edition of the journal PLOS ONE.

BOSTON -- Websites that market personalized cancer care services often overemphasize their purported benefits and downplay their limitations, and many sites offer genetic tests whose value for guiding cancer treatment has not been shown to be clinically useful, according to a new study from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

If there is such a thing as death by popularity it may well explain what is happening to Jane Austen. Once pivotal to the English canon (the greatest female writer in the English language: period) Austen has been adapted and readapted so many times for Hollywood and Bollywood and this stellar popularity seems to be coming at a cost.

Despite the progress made by women in science, engineering, and medicine, a glance at most university directories or pharmaceutical executive committees tells the more complex story. Women in science can succeed, but they are succeeding in fields that may not even be conscious of the gender imbalances. These imbalances manifest themselves in the number of women that are invited to speak at conferences, the percentage of grants awarded to women scientists, and the higher rates of attrition of women at every stage of the career ladder compared to those of men.

Eating a higher proportion of vegetables compared to meat was linked to lower risks of dying from heart disease and stroke, according to research presented at the American Heart Association EPI/Lifestyle 2015 meeting.

The use of psychedelics, such as LSD and magic mushrooms, does not increase a person's risk of developing mental health problems, according to an analysis of information from more than 135,000 randomly chosen people, including 19,000 people who had used psychedelics, sponsored by an LSD advocacy group in Norway. The results are in Journal of Psychopharmacology.