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In a case study on how not to recycle electronic waste (e-waste), scientists in the United States and Hong Kong have documented serious environmental contamination with potentially toxic metals from crude e-waste recycling in a village located in southeast China. Recycling methods used in family-run workshops could pose a serious health risk to residents of the area through ingestion and inhalation of contaminated dust, the researchers say.

Biologists have just confirmed what poets have known for centuries: eyes really are windows of the soul -- or at least of the brain. Harvard researchers describe the development of gene probe eye drops that -- for the first time--make it possible to monitor and detect tissue repair in the brain of living organisms using MRI.

Rates of serious injury among child pedestrians in poor areas of England are four times as high as those among children in affluent areas, finds new research. The findings are based on an analysis of hospital admission rates for children aged up to 15 between 1999 and 2004. Almost 664,000 children up to the age of 15 were admitted to hospital during this period, of which almost 8,000 were for serious injuries.

A recently approved angina drug may also represent a powerful new treatment for a rare hereditary syndrome that places teens at risk for sudden cardiac death, according to new research.

It's not always politically correct to say so, but there are a few minor differences between the brains of men and women. New research shows a novel reversal of these differences in the brains of schizophrenics. "In comparison to the general population, women's brains seem masculine and men's brains seem feminine," said the researcher.

As obesity and inactivity among North America's youth becomes a growing concern, new research is asking why some high school boys are reluctant to participate in physical education classes. And while much of the research being publicly debated links the inactivity to television and computer use, one professor is examining the relationship between perceived masculinity, body image, and health.

Doctors have successfully extracted a kidney through the vagina of a 66 year woman diagnosed with renal cancer. This procedure does not leave external scars, and the recovery time is much less than that of traditional surgery.

Insight into why females of some species undergo menopause while others do not has proven elusive despite an understanding of the biological mechanisms behind the change. However, new research suggests that menopause is an adaptation to minimize reproductive competition between generations of females in the same family unit.

An international blood pressure study comparing two single-pill drug combinations has yielded results so significant that the study has been stopped early -- and the researchers say their findings might alter the way high blood pressure is treated worldwide. The study revealed that the patients taking one of the combinations had 20 percent fewer heart-related events than the patients taking the other one. Those events included cardiovascular deaths, heart attacks, strokes, hospitalizations for unstable angina and treatments to re-open blocked heart arteries.

A unique study proposes a new paradigm in cancer treatment: instead of selectively attacking cancer cells, protect all the healthy cells. Animal studies and in vitro human cell studies show that a short fast protects healthy cells against chemotherapy, while tumor cells remain sensitive to the drugs.