SCIENCELIVE

It's the last day of 2016 and I bet, many didn't have a satisfying year in terms of diet.  However, xplicitinfo brings you a better way to do it, for a beautiful new year.  It's not uncommon to feel as if you're drowning in a sea of diet advice: drink red wine for heart health; avoid bacon and processed meats; make sure your diet is filled with "superfoods." But eating a healthy diet is actually quite simple, if you know what to look for. Live Science pulled together the best advice and the most relevant stories about nutrition so you can eat better this year. Nutrition Guidelines There is no single "perfect" healthy diet. But the U.S. government guidelines, which emphasize eating fruits, vegetables and whole grains and moving away from salt, added sugars and saturated fats, are a good place to start. Here's what they say: Should You Go Vegetarian? Are vegetarian diets really better for you? That may depend on what your goals are. But sci

From puzzling lumps and bumps to bewildering bodily reactions, medical case reports provide unique insight into how the human body functions and how doctors solve medical mysteries.  They also bring up questions you never thought you'd ask. For example, why did a man lose his sense of smell after being bitten by a snake? And what are the effects of sniffing computer cleaner for years? Read on for the 16 strangest case reports that rocked 2016.   1. Ghost pepper leads to torn esophagus Ghost peppers are among the hottest chili peppers in the world, coming in at more than 1 million Scoville units, which experts use to measure the "heat" of peppers. (For comparison, jalapeños measure about 5,000 Scoville units.) A 47-year-old man in California felt the full fiery force of the ghost pepper after eating a hamburger topped with a ghost pepper puree, according to a case report published online in September in  The Journal of Emergency Medicine . After  eating the pepper ,

As we look back at what's transpired in 2016, it could rightly be argued that this was the most successful year ever for marijuana. 2016: Marijuana's most successful year ever Entering 2016, 23 states had legalized cannabis for medical use, while residents in four states -- Washington, Colorado, Oregon, and Alaska -- had approved the sale of recreational pot to adults ages 21 and up. Furthermore, Gallup's 2015 marijuana poll found that 58% of Americans favored the legalization of recreational weed. Now, less than two weeks before the end of the year, 28 states have legalized medical cannabis, two of which did so entirely through the legislative process (Ohio and Pennsylvania). The number of recreational pot states has also doubled to eight from four, with residents in California, Maine, Massachusetts, and Nevada all approving statewide initiatives to legalize adult-use weed. Even marijuana's public approval has increased, with the 2016 Gallup poll finding that 60% of

You see them hanging around, here and there. They’re everywhere, part of the landscape, it seems but you never really pay close attention to them until you blow through a red one. Traffic lights.  Webster’s  defines them as “a set of automatically operated colored lights, typically red, amber, and green, for controlling traffic at road intersections and crosswalks.” Without traffic lights, urban life would be a lot more chaotic than it is. No doubt bloodier, too. Traffic lights as regulators of traffic flow evolved from road signs – those ubiquitous objects on the side of roads that provide essential, often useful, and frequently annoying information. Road signs, of course, came on the scene sometime after the development of roadways, which developed to accommodate vehicular and military traffic.                                                                              The oldest constructed roads known are stone paved streets at Ur, between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in pr

Older folks tend not to engage as much in  risky behavior  as teenagers and young adults do. You might call that  wisdom or learned experience . But this also may be a result of lower amounts of gray matter in the brain, according to a new study. Researchers at Yale and New York University found that adults in the study who were less  inclined to take risks  had less  gray matter  in a brain region called the right posterior parietal cortex, which ― you guessed it! ― is involved in decisions that entail risk. In the study, the researchers asked adult volunteers ranging in age from 18 to 88  to play a game involving risk. The volunteers were allowed to choose between a guaranteed gain, such as pocketing $5, or an uncertain gain, such as a lottery to earn between $5 and $120 with varying chances of winning ― or losing. As the researchers expected, those participants who chose the guaranteed gain — that is, no risk — tended to be older than those who opted for the lottery. It wasn'

Regular  marijuana use  may affect how well certain cells in the eye's retina function, a small new study finds. But some experts say that the evidence presented in the study isn't strong enough to support the link between these two factors. The cells that the researchers focused on in the study, called retinal ganglion cells, are located near the inner surface of  the eye's retina . These cells collect visual information and transmit it to the brain. The study included 52  people who had used marijuana  at least 7 times per week during the previous month and 24 people who had never used marijuana. The people in both groups were between 18 and 35 years old. The researchers verified the marijuana use by testing the people's urine for THC, marijuana's main psychoactive ingredient. [ 7 Ways Marijuana May Affect the Brain ] The researchers tested the participants' vision and found that their  eyesight was relatively good , and that no one in the study group repo

It's generally thought that women are born with a finite number of egg cells, and cannot grow new ones. But in a new study, researchers got a surprise when they found that women undergoing a particular chemotherapy had a much greater number of eggs in their ovaries than expected. The reason for the finding isn't clear, but it suggests that the  chemotherapy  may spur the development of new eggs, the researchers say. If confirmed, it would be the first time that scientists have seen new egg cellsformed in adult women. And understanding exactly how this happens could aid in the development of  fertility treatments  that allow women to produce more eggs, the researchers said. However, the researchers caution that the study was small, and the findings do not prove that the chemotherapy treatment caused the production of new eggs. In addition, it's not clear whether the greater number of eggs seen in these women after the chemotherapy treatment would help with their fertility

The U.S. divorce rate hovers at  40 percent , but that's not the whole story. Many intact relationships are on life support. According to a survey by the National Opinion Research Center,  60 percent  of people in a relationship say they're not very satisfied. There are some familiar culprits:  money problems ,  bad sex  and  having kids . But there's a new relationship buster: the smartphone. My colleague Meredith David and I recently conducted  a study  that explored just how detrimental smartphones can be to relationships. We zeroed in on measuring something we've dubbed "phubbing" (a fusion of "phone" and "snubbing"). It's how often your romantic partner is distracted by his or her smartphone in your presence. With  more and more people  using the attention-siphoning devices –  the typical American checks his or her smartphone once every six-and-a-half minutes , or roughly 150 times each day – phubbing has emerged as a re

People who are sexually active and who regularly  groom their pubic hair  may be more likely to contract sexually transmitted infections than those who don't groom their pubic hair at all, according to a new study. People in the study who regularly groomed their pubic hair were 80 percent more likely to report contracting a  sexually transmitted infection (STI)  than those who never groomed their pubic hair, the researchers found. The study shows a link between grooming pubic hair and the increased risk of contracting sexually transmitted infections, but it does not prove that grooming one's pubic hair directly causes a person's risk of such infections to increase, said lead study author Dr. E. Charles Osterberg, an assistant professor of surgery at the University of Texas. [ 10 Surprising Sex Statistics ] There are two ways to explain the findings, the researchers said. It is possible that people who groom their pubic hair are  more susceptible to small tears in the ski

A drug made from  marijuana  that does not produce a "high" may help reduce seizures in people with certain types of epilepsy that are difficult to treat, new research suggests. In two new studies, researchers tested the drug, which is a purified solution of cannabidiol (CBD), a  compound found in marijuana . Although CBD affects the brain, it does not produce euphoria or intoxication, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. One study involved 120 children with a rare and severe form of epilepsy called Dravet syndrome that had caused them to experience at least four seizures in the past month. The children were randomly assigned to take either the CBD medicine or a placebo, twice a day. After 14 weeks, the patients in the CBD group experienced a 39 percent reduction in the frequency of their seizures on average, compared with a 13 percent average reduction in the placebo group. The other study involved 171 children and adults with a  type of epilepsy  called Len