We’ve known for some time now that during sleep, the brain undergoes a memory spring cleaning of sorts, during which thoughts collected during that day are either converted into long-term memories or discarded.It makes sense that this brain cleanse would occur at night when the brain is idle, considering there’s no way that even the enormous human brain could possibly have enough room for everything that we take in on a given day.Until recently, researchers didn’t understand the mechanism ...read more

Have you ever had your dog get irritated red paws after running around in the grass outside, or has your cat recently developed a rash? One study from 2018 found that in the past decade, cases of environmental allergies have risen by 30.7 percent in dogs and 11.5 percent in cats.Like humans, our pets can also get runny, sneezy noses and itchy skin during allergy seasons. Most allergy spikes coincide with the changing seasons in the spring and Fall, but changes in food and using specific types of ...read more

Drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy have been billed as "gamechangers" in the fight against obesity and diabetes, and the popularity of these drugs as a weight loss aid is booming: In the U.S., health care providers wrote 9 million prescriptions for drugs like Ozempic in the last three months of 2022 alone, according to a 2023 analysis. But like any medication, however, Ozempic and similar drugs — which use semaglutide as an active ingredient to mimic a naturally occurring hormone called GLP-1 — c ...read more

When it comes to animal welfare, there’s no debate. A vegetarian or vegan diet is, pretty much by definition, better for animals. When it comes to the environment, there’s a lot of evidence that giving up animal products can do a world of good. But what about health? Is going veggie good for your health? The reasons vegetarian diets are healthy are pretty clear, explains Heather Hodson, a clinical nutritionist at NYU Langone’s Center for the Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease. People wh ...read more

Anxiety is a reaction to stress. It manifests itself in a variety of mental and physical effects. These include feelings of fear, dread, worry, unease, and tension. Other associated symptoms are shortness of breath, nausea, muscle tension, racing heart, headaches, fatigue, sleeplessness, and difficulty concentrating. Anxiety can lead to isolation and depression, as well as creating issues at work and/or school. Almost 20 percent of American adults have experienced anxiety. This equates to over ...read more

You’ve likely heard that you can get iron from eating spinach and steak. You might also know that it’s an essential trace element that is a major component of hemoglobin, a protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen from your lungs to all parts of the body.A lesser known important function of iron is its involvement in generating energy for certain immune cells.In our lab’s newly published research, we found that blocking or limiting iron uptake in immune cells could potentially ease u ...read more

Earlier this month, we visited the Cascade Range volcanoes on British Columbia. Today we're hitting the volcanoes in Washington, including likely the most famous volcano (after Yellowstone) in the United States as well as a contender for the most powerful (known) eruption in the Cascades. All the images come from the Sentinel-2 Earth observing missions launched by the European Space Agency. This missions will become even more vital for monitoring the planet after NASA's Terra and Aqua satellite ...read more

It seemed like a good job at first. Starting in 1917, the United States Radium Corporation hired teenage girls and young women to work as painters. Using fine paintbrushes, the workers applied glow-in-the-dark paint onto watches and military instruments. The paint shone brightly because it contained radium, a substance that management assured the young workers was harmless.In the book The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women, author Kate Moore detailed how the workers were t ...read more

You might have heard that our world is out of balance. Ecosystems that need native plants and animals to flourish are plagued by human development and invasive species. Many of our local green spaces like yards, parks, and porches are home to mostly introduced, non-native plants that do little to maintain a healthy regional biodiversity.Want to restore native biodiversity? It’s possible, and the solutions are within reach: try rewilding your community with native plants. Mary Reynolds created ...read more

Have you ever said “I hate you” to someone? What about using the “h-word” in casual conversation, like “I hate broccoli”? What are you really feeling when you say that you hate something or someone?The Merriam-Webster dictionary describes the word “hate” as an “intense hostility and aversion usually deriving from fear, anger, or sense of injury.” All over the world, researchers like us are studying hate from disciplines like education, history, law, leadership, psychology, so ...read more