Category Archives: Science & Health

Somewhere in Cameroon and 25 to 30 kilometers in from the nearest dirt road is a spot once inhabited by the lone tent of Tom Smith, director of the UCLA Center for Tropical Research. For more than a decade, Smith made his second home in a tent studying birds as models for ecological biodiversity and […]

“¢bull; The Dec. 26, 2004 tsunami killed more than 30,000 people and left a million homeless in Sri Lanka, one of 11 countries hit. The total death toll ranges from 162,000 to 178,000 people, according to official estimates. “¢bull; The gruesome task of retrieving the dead in Indonesia is unlikely to be finished by June, […]

Sprawled beneath a pale orange sky, the foreign wind rustling its recently discharged parachute, a solitary probe sent its first signal to expectant earthlings nearly a billion miles away. Last month, the Huygens probe landed with a “splat” on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, sending back the first physical data from the only moon in the […]

If Oprah jumped off a bridge, would you do it too? The proverbial bridge in question is Airborne, the Alka-Seltzer-like herbal concoction that was developed by a second-grade school teacher who just couldn�t shake the sniffles. Her theory was simple: design a nutritional supplement to safeguard against illness. The end product is a tablet that, […]

In light of the fact that the number of HIV-infected women increases every year, it may seem that the number of newborns contracting the virus should also increase. But HIV in infants has reached such a low rate in the United States that many experts hope to see its presence in newborns eradicated. HIV ““ […]

“¢bull; The USS Abraham Lincoln, with a crew of 5,300, formed the core of the largest foreign military deployment in the area and the most extensive U.S. operation in Southeast Asia since the Vietnam War. Its departure on Thursday was the single biggest drawdown of the U.S. relief effort. “¢bull; In a visit to Indonesia […]

Embryonic stem cell lines that have been federally approved for research may be contaminated by the animal cells used to culture them, according to a study released last week. These contaminated stem cell lines, 22 in total, cannot be applied therapeutically because the foreign particles would trigger rejection by the human immune system. The findings, […]