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Pfizer CEO pushes yearly shots for covid. Not so fast, experts say.

When Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said March 13 that all Americans would need a second booster shot, it struck many covid experts as a self-serving remark without scientific merit. It also set off spasms of doubt over the country's objectives in its fight against the coronavirus.

21 Mar 2022

New trial finds signs of preventive cardiovascular effects for cocoa flavanols

The first large-scale trial to test the long-term effects of a cocoa flavanol supplement to prevent cardiovascular disease offers promising signals that cocoa flavanols could have protective cardiovascular effects.

16 Mar 2022

Edible egg-derived IgY antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 Omicron

A new study posted to the bioRxiv* preprint server reports on the development of anti-RBD immunoglobulin Y (IgY) antibodies from chicken eggs to block the binding of the viral RBD to human ACE2 receptors. This approach has several advantages since chicken egg-derived IgY can be edible and polyclonal can target multiple epitopes, enhancing neutralizing activity.

23 Feb 2022

Two peanut allergy treatments for children found to be highly effective at inducing remission

Researchers have discovered two peanut allergy treatments for children that are both highly effective at inducing remission.

7 Feb 2022

Northwestern and partners are part of mega NIH program to investigate precision nutrition

Northwestern, the University of Chicago, Illinois Institute of Technology, University of Illinois, Chicago and Rush University are part of a mega National Institutes of Health (NIH) $170 million program that is the first comprehensive study to investigate precision nutrition.

27 Jan 2022

Fear of getting sick with COVID-19 linked to increase in disgust sensitivity

Theory has it that disgust sensitivity – how intensely a person is repulsed by images, ideas or situations that could be considered terribly gross or merely unpleasant – is an evolutionary trait that initially helped humans avoid eating rotten food that would have made them sick.

18 Jan 2022

A catch-22 trips up some in legal guardianship who try to regain independence

Ten years ago, Nicholas Clouse was riding shotgun in his friend's Camaro when the car jerked and he felt himself flying through the air. Clouse's head slammed against the passenger-side window.

7 Jan 2022

New guidelines for heart-healthy eating

We speak to Dr. Alice Lichtenstein about the American Heart Association’s latest guidelines for a heart-healthy diet, and how they can be applied across different lifestyles.

14 Dec 2021

Polyphenol-rich diet improves the intestinal permeability in older adults

The increase of intestinal permeability is associated with factors such as ageing, food allergies and intolerances and unhealthy diets.

26 Oct 2021

Thousands of unknown chemicals and substances found in e-cigarettes

Vaping aerosols contain thousands of unknown chemicals and substances not disclosed by manufacturers, including industrial chemicals and caffeine, Johns Hopkins University researchers found.

6 Oct 2021

Neuroscientists discover how associative memories are formed

Has the scent of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies ever taken you back to afternoons at your grandmother's house? Has an old song ever brought back memories of a first date? The ability to remember relationships between unrelated items (an odor and a location, a song and an event) is known as associative memory.

23 Sep 2021

Researchers explore whether cocoa supplementation can reduce aging

Whether consuming cocoa, known to be packed with powerful antioxidants that protect our cells from damage, helps us age better, is a question scientists want to definitively answer.

14 Sep 2021

Study provides insight into fitness effects of genomic structural variants in natural populations

Molecular geneticists have known for about a decade that genomic structural variants can play important roles in the adaptation and speciation of both plants and animals, but their overall influence on the fitness of plant populations is poorly understood.

16 Aug 2021

COVID-19 prevention strategies for the U.S. food industry

A new study discusses the measures that should be taken to mitigate the risk of COVID-19 among food industry workers.

15 Aug 2021

Promoting infant healthy feeding practices can result in lower consumption of fats, carbohydrates later

Researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and Universidade Federal de Ciências da Saúde de Porto Alegre, Brazil found that when health workers were trained to promote infant healthy feeding practices to pregnant women their children consumed less fats and carbohydrates at 3 years of age and had lower measures of body fat at the age of 6.

1 Jun 2021

Candy-like models could make science more accessible to visually impaired students

About 36 million people have blindness including 1 million children. Additionally, 216 million people experience moderate to severe visual impairment. However, STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education maintains a reliance on three-dimensional imagery for education. Most of this imagery is inaccessible to students with blindness.

29 May 2021

Two compounds can cause musty, moldy scents in cocoa

Chocolate is a beloved treat, but sometimes the cocoa beans that go into bars and other sweets have unpleasant flavors or scents, making the final products taste bad.

28 Apr 2021

Why do we lose our sense smell/taste with COVID?

The angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) enzyme attached to the membranes of cells is the entry point for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). They are abundantly found all over the body and most prominently in the lungs and nose.

28 Apr 2021

Cocoa consumption improves health of obese mice with liver disease

Supplementation of cocoa powder in the diet of high-fat-fed mice with liver disease markedly reduced the severity of their condition, according to a new study by Penn State researchers, who suggest the results have implications for people.

15 Apr 2021