Tech

Paul Sutter explores the origins of life, and DNA versus RNA

Produced and directed by Corey Eisenstein. Click here for transcript. (video link) After spending three episodes looking to the heavens—first at dark matter, then Mars, then black holes—our intrepid host Paul Sutter now turns his gaze to a more terrestrial topic: Why are we here? And I don’t mean in a Nietzschean sense (and if […]

Tech

No, bad leftovers didn’t cause teen’s life-threatening infection, amputations

Enlarge / A metal ladle is used to serve takeout Chinese food from a plastic container, Lafayette, California, December 25, 2021. (credit: Getty | Gado) Medical experts are calling out a rotten batch of news articles that wrongly claimed spoiled leftover Chinese food caused a teen to develop a life-threatening infection within hours, which led […]

Tech

Smokers gave a home to bacteria that now sicken people with cystic fibrosis

Enlarge (credit: Peter Dazeley / Getty Images ) Smoking can really clog up the lungs, even for people who’ve never been near a cigarette. Turns out that smoking habits from the early 1900s are still inflicting damage—not on tobacco users or their families, but on people with cystic fibrosis. Cystic fibrosis (CF) is a hereditary […]

Tech

Mystery of deadly US infections solved; aromatherapy spray at Walmart to blame

Enlarge / Burkholderia pseudomallei grown on sheep blood agar for 24 hours. B. pseudomallei is a Gram-negative aerobic bacteria, and it’s the causative agent of melioidosis. (credit: Getty | CDC/Larry Stauffer, Oregon State Public Health Laboratory) The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday confirmed that an aromatherapy gemstone spray sold at Walmart is […]

Tech

4th person in US mysteriously stricken with deadly bacteria from South Asia

Enlarge / Burkholderia pseudomallei grown on sheep blood agar for 24 hours. B. pseudomallei is a Gram-negative aerobic bacteria, and it’s the causative agent of melioidosis. (credit: Getty | CDC/Courtesy of Larry Stauffer, Oregon State Public Health Laboratory ) A fourth person in a fourth US state has mysteriously contracted a deadly Southern Asian bacterium […]