SCIENCE AND HEALTH HIGHLIGHTS

December 19,  2013 (San Diego’s East County) -- Our Health and Science Highlights provide cutting edge news each week that could impact your health and our future.

SCIENCE

• GAIA billion star surveyor takes off (BBC)
• Yellowstone supervolcano: 2.5 times bigger than anyone knew (CS Monitor)

HEALTH

• Severed hand kept alive on ankle (BBC)
• Yogurt a solution to hospital infection? (Jewish World Review)
• Patient with mysterious illness diagnosed with H1N1 (KHOU)

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

SCIENCE

GAIA billion star surveyor takes off (BBC)

Europe has launched the Gaia satellite - one of the most ambitious space missions in history.

Yellowstone supervolcano: 2.5 times bigger than anyone knew (CS Monitor)

Yellowstone supervolcano: The magma chamber underneath the Yellowstone caldera is 55 miles long and 18 miles wide. The Yellowstone supervolcano has the potential to erupt with a force about 2,000 times greater than the Mount St. Helens 1980 eruption, according to a new study.

HEALTH

Severed hand kept alive on ankle (BBC)

Chinese doctors save a man's severed hand by grafting it to his ankle, buying time before reattaching it to his injured arm.

Yogurt a solution to hospital infection? (Jewish World Review)

Holy Redeemer in Montgomery County, Pa., is using yogurt — the kind you could buy at the grocery store — to fight C. difficile, a hospital-acquired infection that has been growing throughout the country.  After dietitians began encouraging patients taking antibiotics to eat yogurt, the infection rate fell by two-thirds. 

Patient with mysterious illness diagnosed with H1N1 (KHOU)

At least one of the eight patients being treated for a mysterious illness at Conroe Regional Medical Center has tested positive for H1N1, according to Montgomery County health officials. It's the same strain of H1N1 that caused a pandemic in 2009. Doctors have been seeing hundreds of new cases recently in Texas and nationwide. In fact, H1N1 is one of the viruses included in this year's flu shot.