3 science-backed home remedies to ease the common cold - The Washington Post

From chicken soup and honey to vitamin C and wet hair, Dr. Guy Choshen examines common cold remedies, separating those that may ease symptoms from those that lack scientific evidence and explaining when medical attention is neededynet|As winter approaches, the familiar box of tissues returns to the table, along with a flood of well-meaning advice on how to ward off a cold. Every household has at least one traditional remedy passed down through generations: hot chicken soup when a runny nose starts, a glass of orange juice to "boost the immune system" and the familiar warning at the door: "You're not going outside with wet hair! "But there can be a considerable gap between grandmother's wisdom and what modern medicine tells us. Dr. Guy Choshen, head of Internal Medicine Department B at Meir Medical Center, part of Israel's Clalit Health Services, examines the most common home remedies and myths surrounding colds, distinguishing between what works, what does no harm and what simply isn't true. GalleryWhich remedies actually work and which just have good publicity?

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researcher Isaiah Santistevan led the development of three-dimensional simulations exploring how a nuclear device could deflect or disrupt an asteroid threatening Earth. Credit: Blaise Douros/LLNL Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) researchers are developing three-dimensional simulations to examine how a nuclear device could be used to deflect or potentially disrupt an asteroid threatening Earth.

Milky Way’s first microblazar candidate sits 12,000 light-years away, offering a rare ground-level lab for studying relativistic jetsA black hole 12,000 light-years away is firing a jet of plasma almost directly toward Earth. At that distance, no known or expected danger to Earth has been identified by the researchers or the institutions involved. What astronomers have actually found is rarer and more interesting than a threat. Researchers have identified IRAS 18293-0941 as a compelling candidate for the Milky Way’s first microblazar, a class of object that gives astrophysicists a close-up laboratory for studying some of the most violent physics in the galaxy. What Astronomers FoundThe discovery centers on a binary system whose black hole expels plasma jets at close to three-quarters the speed of light, pointed almost directly toward Earth. The system pairs a hot, massive star with a black hole that completes a full orbit roughly every 11.38 days. Material drawn from the companion star feeds the black hole, and some of that matter gets expelled outward as opposing jets traveling at approximately three-quarters the speed of light. Terminology matters here.

Forests that stood on Mozambique's coast thousands of years ago now lie beneath shallow seas, and they have become fish-filled "peat reefs" with marine life comparable to coral reefs, researchers report in Scientific Reports. A team from the Bazaruto Center for Scientific Studies (BCSS) Ocean Observatory, led by Mario Lebrato, documented the submerged peat in the Bazaruto Archipelago in the Western Indian Ocean. BCSS, founded in 2017, describes itself as Africa's first permanent ocean observatory. Working with universities and institutions in the U. K., U. S. and Canada, the team believes it has carried out the first ecological study of peat reefs anywhere in the tropics. Old forests, new seafloorRadiocarbon dating shows the peat formed between about 300 and 5,000 years ago, and chemical analysis indicates it came mostly from coastal land plants and trees. Some samples contain up to 40% organic carbon by dry weight. Lebrato said the coastline has very little natural hard seabed, mostly shifting sand. As rising seas expose the old peat layers, they create rare solid habitat where marine life can settle, hide and feed.

Coral bleaching restoration at Stanford – by Dan Griffin / GG Films (via SWNS, cropped) Coral bleaching has been reversed at record speed using a new method developed at Stanford University.