HEALTH AND SCIENCE HIGHLIGHTS

August 22, 2017 (San Diego's East County) -- Our Health and Science Highlights provide cutting edge news that could impact your health and our future.

HEALTH

• Probiotic prevents sepsis in infants (Chemical and Engineering News)
• Peanut allergy treatment lasts up to four years (BBC)
• Too many babies still placed on stomach to sleep: study (WebMD)
• Dangers of Marijuana Experienced Firsthand (American College of Emergency Physicians)
• To Get Calcium, Navajos Burn Juniper Branches to Eat the Ash (NPR)

SCIENCE AND TECHNNOLOGY

• Solar eclipse through the eyes of NASA (NASA.gov)
• Trump administration just disbanded federal advisory commission on climate change (Washington Post)
• Silk Road: Google Search Unmasked Dread Pirate Roberts (BBC)

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

HEALTH

Probiotic prevents sepsis in infants (Chemical and Engineering News)

Treatment could reduce infections responsible for neonatal deaths in the developing world

Peanut allergy treatment lasts up to four years (BBC)

An oral treatment for peanut allergy is still effective four years after it was administered, a study has found. Children were given a probiotic, with a peanut protein, daily for 18 months.  When tested one month later, 80% could tolerate peanuts without any allergic symptoms and after four years, 70% of them were still able to eat peanuts without suffering any side-effects.

Too many babies still placed on stomach to sleep: study (WebMD)

Despite years of public health campaigns, many American parents are still putting their babies to sleep in an unsafe position, a new study finds.

Dangers of Marijuana Experienced Firsthand (ACEP Now)

I recently finished my residency in emergency medicine and began to practice in Pueblo, Colorado…patients are coming into the emergency department with a variety of unexpected problems such as marijuana-induced psychosis, dependence, burn injuries, increased abuse of other drugs … This new commercialized marijuana is near 20 percent tetrahydrocannabinol (THC, the psychoactive component of cannabis), while the marijuana of the 1980s was less than 2 percent THC. This tenfold increase in potency doesn’t include other formulations such as oils, “shatter” (highly concentrated solidified THC), or “dabbing” (heated shatter that is inhaled to get an even more potent form) that have up to 80 or 90 percent THC.

To Get Calcium, Navajos Burn Juniper Branches to Eat the Ash (NPR)

Most American Indians are lactose intolerant, which means they need to find nutrients outside of dairy sources. It turns out that a return to traditional cooking methods can be key to good health.

SCIENCE AND TECHNNOLOGY

Solar eclipse through the eyes of NASA (NASA.gov)

On Monday, Aug. 21, North America was treated to an eclipse of the Sun. The eclipse's path stretched from Salem, Oregon to Charleston, South Carolina. NASA covered it live from coast to coast from unique vantage points on the ground and from aircraft and spacecraft, including the International Space Station. Check out some of the amazing video and images captured during the event:

Trump administration just disbanded federal advisory commission on climate change (Washington Post)

The Trump administration has decided to disband the federal advisory panel for the National Climate Assessment, a group aimed at helping policymakers and private-sector officials incorporate the government’s climate analysis into long-term planning.

Silk Road: Google Search Unmasked Dread Pirate Roberts (BBC)

You could buy any drug imaginable, wherever you were in the world, on the Silk Road website. Hidden on the dark web, it made millions of dollars every week. The US government had been trying to shut it down for more than two years when tax agent Gary Alford was brought in to try to trace the money which passed through the site. In his spare time, Gary started searching Google to try to find the mysterious mastermind behind the site: Dread Pirate Roberts.