Science

A study links African clawed frogs, which were brought to California decades ago for use in pregnancy tests, with a deadly pathogen.African clawed frogs were first brought to California decades ago to help doctors figure out whether their patients were pregnant. After new technology made those pregnancy tests obsolete, the creatures were let loose, and thrived for decades in the state's drainage ditches and ponds.

Newer shots are safer, but not as effective as older ones

A new undersea gold rush could be coming soon with the rising cost of minerals and advancements in technology opening the seafloor to mining.

Emergency physicians are key decisionmakers for nearly half of all hospital admissions, highlighting a critical role they can play in reducing health care costs, according to a new report from the RAND Corporation.

A new measure of the heterogeneity -- the variety of genetic mutations -- of cells within a tumor appears to predict treatment outcomes of patients with the most common type of head and neck cancer better than most traditional risk factors.

A novel study reports that white men and women of European descent inherit common foot disorders, such as bunions (hallux valgus) and lesser toe deformities, including hammer or claw toe. Findings from the Framingham Foot Study -- the first to estimate the heritability of foot disorders in humans -- appear in Arthritis Care & Research, a journal published by Wiley on behalf of the American College of Rheumatology.

Whole-cell pertussis vaccines were more effective at protecting against pertussis than acellular pertussis vaccines during a large recent outbreak, according to a new Kaiser Permanente study published in Pediatrics.

What's more heavy metal than a man in a chainmail suit of armor shredding on a guitar while shrouded by 600,000 Volts of lighting? Absolutely nothing! Continue reading ?

cold fjord writes "A healthcare provider has sued the Internal Revenue Service and 15 of its agents, charging they wrongfully seized 60 million medical records from 10 million Americans ... [The unnamed company alleges] the agency violated the Fourth Amendment in 2011, when agents executed a search warrant for financial data on one employee – and that led to the seizure of information on 10 million, including state judges. The search warrant did not specify that the IRS could take medical information, UPI said. And information technology officials warned the IRS about the potential to violate medical privacy laws before agents executed the warrant, the complaint said." Also at Nextgov.com. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Stanislaw Lem's forgotten masterwork Summa Technologiae, now in English half a century after publication, is a heady mix of prescience, philosophy and irony