Short Sleepers May Catch More Colds

Want to avoid catching a cold this winter? Start by getting more than six hours of sleep a night.In what may be the first study of this kind, researchers say they found that adults who sleep less than five or six hours a night are four times more likely to catch a cold than than those who get at least seven or more hours of sleep.“Sleep plays a role in regulating the immune system, and that’s how

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Why Do Muscles Ache a Day or Two After Exercise?

After rigorous exercise, the muscle pain is more acute a day or two later rather than immediately. Why is that?Welcome to the equivocal effects of delayed onset muscle soreness, the scientific term for aches that accumulate and intensify a day or two after a strenuous workout. Usually, D.O.M.S. involves not just pain but also “loss of strength and range of motion in the affected area,” said Scott

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Filtered Sunlight Is Good Cure for Infant Jaundice, Study Says

Filtered sunlight is a cheap, effective way to treat infant jaundice, according to a study by Stanford researchers.Jaundice — caused by an excess of bilirubin in the blood — leads to brain damage or death in about 150,000 babies a year in poor countries. The problem is common in newborns, whose livers sometimes need several days after birth to generate the enzymes needed to break down bilirubin,

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Spread of Cigarettes in China

Chinese men now smoke one-third of all the world’s cigarettes, and a third of all young men in China are doomed to eventually die from the habit, scientists in China and Britain have concluded.Their study, published last week in The Lancet, estimated that two-thirds of all males in China smoked, more were still taking up the habit and more were starting as teenagers, which adds risk.With populati

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To Prevent Malaria in Humans, Scientists Try Protecting Pigs

For years , scientists have known of a sneaky way to kill mosquitoes: Give humans a deworming pill.The active ingredient, ivermectin, kills not only worms infesting people but also mosquitoes who drink their drug-laden blood. (Ivermectin also kills lice, bedbugs and other blood-feeders. The drug’s inventors recently received a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.)Turning everyone in a village i

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