HEALTH AND SCIENCE HIGHLIGHTS

June 28, 2017 (San Diego's East County) -- Our Health and Science Highlights provide cutting edge news that could impact your health and our future.

HEALTH

• Three more GOP Senators announce opposition to healthcare bill (The Hill)
• New study links recreational marijuana to increase in car crashes (CS Monitor)
• Cardiologist: Breast implants skew heart attack test (BBC)
• Ebola virus burial teams may have 'saved thousands of lives' (BBC)
• Skin patches may be the future of flu vaccines, study suggests (CNN)

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

• Google faces years of EU oversight on top of record antitrust fine (Reuters)
• Princeton-Trained Computer Scientists Are Building a New Internet That Brings Privacy and Property Rights to Cyberspace  (Reason)
• Facial Recognition May Boost Airport Security but Raises Privacy Worries (NPR)
• Jellied sea creatures confound scientists, fishermen on U.S. Pacific Coast (Reuters)
• Many firms hit by global cyber-attacks (BBC)
• Mark Zuckerberg explains why he just changed Facebook’s mission (CNN)
• Moth Eyes Inspire Glare-Resistant Coating for Cellphone Screens (NPR)
• Our Sun Probably Grew Up with a Sibling (Smithsonian)

For excerpts and links to full stories, click “read more” and scroll down.

HEALTH

Three more GOP Senators announce opposition to healthcare bill (The Hill)

Republican Sens. Jerry Moran (Kan.), Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.) and Rob Portman (Ohio) announced Tuesday afternoon that they will vote against the Senate GOP bill to repeal and replace ObamaCare in its current form…. Nine GOP senators now oppose the bill, which leaves Republicans with a steep climb to get the measure through the Senate. Republicans have a slim 52-48 majority in the upper chamber, meaning they can only afford to lose two GOP votes, assuming no Democrats support the bill.

New study links recreational marijuana to increase in car crashes (CS Monitor)

In a study released Thursday, the Highway Loss Data Institute showed that Oregon, Washington, and Colorado saw car crash incidents rise by 2.7 percent since recreational marijuana was legalized in those states.

Cardiologist: Breast implants skew heart attack test (BBC)

Breast implants make it trickier to run tests that can help spot a possible heart attack, a cardiologist says.

Ebola virus burial teams may have 'saved thousands of lives' (BBC)

A key part of reducing the number of Ebola deaths was ensuring safe burials, research says.

Skin patches may be the future of flu vaccines, study suggests (CNN)

The future of flu vaccines just might come in a tiny, prickly patch. A phase 1 clinical trial, the results of which were published in the medical journal Lancet on Tuesday, has deemed the dissolvable microneedle flu patch to be "well tolerated" and safe for possible use.

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Google faces years of EU oversight on top of record antitrust fine (Reuters)

Beyond a headline-grabbing 2.4 billion euro ($2.7 billion) fine EU antitrust regulators have leveled against Google, the internet giant is likely to be shackled for years by Tuesday's precedent-setting decision defining the company as a monopoly.

Princeton-Trained Computer Scientists Are Building a New Internet That Brings Privacy and Property Rights to Cyberspace  (Reason)

Meet the developers behind Blockstack, who are using blockchain technology to reconfigure the web. It’ll make NSA mass data collection impossible.

Facial Recognition May Boost Airport Security but Raises Privacy Worries (NPR)

If you travel from Boston's Logan Airport to Aruba on JetBlue, you can use your face as identification rather than a passport. Similar experiments in facial recognition are underway at other airports.

Jellied sea creatures confound scientists, fishermen on U.S. Pacific Coast (Reuters)

Drifting throngs of jelly-like, glowing organisms native to tropical seas far from shore have invaded Pacific coastal waters from Southern California to the Gulf of Alaska this year, baffling researchers and frustrating fishing crews. Known as pyrosomes, they are tubular colonies of hundreds or thousands of tiny individual creatures called zooids, enmeshed together in a gelatinous tunic roughly the consistency of gummy bear candy.

Many firms hit by global cyber-attacks (BBC)

…Ukrainian firms, including the state power distributor and Kiev's main airport were among the first to report issues. Some experts are suggesting that it could be a ransomware attack, similar to Wannacry which hit last month.

Mark Zuckerberg explains why he just changed Facebook’s mission (CNN)

… The company even has a new mission statement: "To give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together." 

Moth Eyes Inspire Glare-Resistant Coating for Cellphone Screens (NPR)

The scientists who developed the anti-reflective film were inspired by tiny, light-trapping structures on moth eyes that help the insects avoid predators…. Films that mimic moth eyes have already been used to increase the efficiency of solar cells.

Our Sun Probably Grew Up with a Sibling (Smithsonian)

When a pair of researchers went looking for the secrets of stars like the sun, they learned that Earth’s sun probably once had a twin-like star to call its own.