Scientists-- and parents-- have long wondered why we dont remember anything that happened before age 3. As all parents know, no matter how momentous an event is in a toddlers life, the memory soon drifts away and within months there isnt even a wisp of it left.Now a new study shows that infantile amnesia may be due to the rapid growth of nerve cells in the hippocampus, the brain region resp...

It sounded too good to be true and unfortunately it was. Three research studies out Thursday severely diminish the hope that a cancer drug already on the market could be an Alzheimers treatment.In February 2012 scientists at Case Western University Medical Center reported that a drug approved to treat skin cancer cured a mouse of a form of Alzheimers. They reported the drug eliminated the plaq...

In the most prominent challenge of its kind, Hobby Lobby Stores Inc. is asking a federal appeals court Thursday for an exemption from part of the federal health care law that requires it to offer employees health coverage that includes access to the morning-after pill. The Oklahoma City-based arts-and-crafts chain argues that businesses not just the currently exempted religious groups sho...

A cluster of mysterious respiratory illnesses that alarmed southeast Alabama turned out to be nothing more sinister than ordinary cold and seasonal flu, health officials said Thursday.Lab tests by state and federal officials ruled out avian influenza and a novel coronavirus, now known as MERS, that has killed 22 people in the Middle East.There is no evidence of any new or unexpected virus circula...

The H7N9 bird flu can spread from one mammal to another meaning it could also spread person to person, an international team of researchers reported Thursday.Researchers havent been exactly sure how H7N9 is spreading. They know it can infect people its infected more than 130 people and killed more than 30 of them but they have suspected most of the victims had some sort of contact with inf...

What distinguishes somebody with high intelligence quotient (IQ) scores, besides the annoying habit of finding a way to inject that fact into almost any conversation?According to a new study from researchers at the University of Rochester, it could be their ability to ignore sensory information, specifically irrelevant information we take in with our eyes.The study, released Thursday by the journa...

By Tom Miles and Stephanie NebehayReutersThe World Health Organization (WHO) warned countries with possible cases of the SARS-like novel coronavirus on Thursday that they must share information and not allow commercial labs to profit from the virus, which has killed 22 people worldwide. Saudi Arabia, where the first case occurred, has said the development of diagnostic tests for the disease ...

Children need a full hour of exercise in schools every day, and not just in physical education classes, the Institute of Medicine recommended on Thursday.Schools that have dumped education classes need to put them back on the schedule, the report recommends. They also need to help kids get up and moving in the classroom, at recess and after school, a committee of experts appointed by the Ins...

The World Health Organization says there are now 22 deaths worldwide out of 44 lab-confirmed cases of the new coronavirus. WHO officials have reported another fatal case of the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus, or MERS, in central Saudi Arabia, but say it is not related to the cluster of cases reported from the country's east. The U.N. health agency said in a statement Thursday, c...

Across the nation fewer and fewer teens are giving birth, especially Hispanic girls, according to a new government report.Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that from 2007 to 2011, the overall rate of teen births plummeted a full 30 percent. The biggest decline was among Hispanic teens, whose birth rate dropped 34 percent. Among non-Hispanic black teens there was...

When a devastating tornado touched down in Moore, Okla., on Monday afternoon, Shayla Taylor was on the upper floor of the local hospital, in active labor with her second child.As the floor shook like an earthquake beneath her and ceiling tiles and insulation fell overhead, the 25-year-old huddled with four nurses, braving both the peak contractions of childbirth and the wrath of the worst twiste...

The Youngstown, Ohio, baby turned blue again and again as his little airways collapsed and kept air from reaching his lungs. But doctors used a 3-D bioprinter to custom-make a splint that is holding his airway open and helping him breathe.Now 19-month-old Kaiba Gionfriddo is into everything, says his mother, April Gionfriddo."Quite a few doctors said he had a good chance of not leaving the hosp...

A dog may not only fill a home with joy, it fills a home with a whole lot of bacteria, new research suggests. But that doesn't mean you have to kick your pooch out of the bed.Research from North Carolina State University published Wednesday in the journal PLoS ONE found homes with dogs have both a greater number of bacteria and more types of bacteria than homes without dogs.The findings were par...

Doctors treating victims hurt badly in Mondays devastating Moore, Okla., tornado should be alert for a rare but deadly complication of wind-whipped debris: fungal infections like those that killed five people after the Joplin, Mo., twister in 2011.Thats the word from government experts in fungal infections, who documented 13 serious cases of necrotizing cutaneous mucormycosis -- terrible soft ti...

By Matthew PerroneAssociated PressA federal panel of medical experts said that an experimental insomnia drug from Merck & Co. Inc. appears safe and effective, despite evidence from company trials that the pill can cause daytime sleepiness and difficulty driving.A majority of Food and Drug Administration panelists voted Wednesday that Merck's sleeping aid, suvorexant, helped patients get t...

Government researchers have just done the first genetic survey of all the fungi that live on our skin. Their findings? Theyre in your ears, theyre in your nose and, yes, they are in the goop between your toes.Humans are covered with hundreds of different types of fungus, the team at the National Institutes of Health found. Whats surprising is that one family covers most of our bodies, but our ...

On the morning after a tornado destroyed parts of Moore, Okla., it was tough dropping off my daughter at school. Storms also hit here in Rogers, Ark. on Monday, but they were mild compared to Oklahoma. Still, wedrove past fallen tree limbs and leaves everywhere. I tried not to cry listening to the radio report about the children in the Plaza Towers Elementary School, and the mother who picked up h...