Science roundup – badder superbugs, human paranoia and suffering preemies

Superbugs are getting worse

Drug-resistant bacteria are prompting doctors to break out meds long resisted due to side effects. And some of them aren’t working, even.

Do you insist your family doc give you pills for what is a cold or flu? Point the finger at yourself for contributing to the problem.

Just because the virtual guy is looking at me… well, maybe I am paranoid

Since human paranoia is kind of hard to study under normal, lab-type scientific conditions, British researchers hit on something new — use virtual reality, specifically, a mock-up of London’s “tube,” to study possible paranoia.

Result? Forty percent of studied people exhibited at least one paranoiac reaction to at least one virtual reality character.

Preemie babies — lifelong effects

A study of more than 1 million adults have shown that health problems from premature births are more varied and longer-lasting than previously realized. Specifically:

• Boys born between 22 and 27 weeks had the highest rate of early childhood death.
• Reproduction rates were considerably lower for men and women born preterm when compared to those born at term. Reproduction increased in direct proportion to higher gestational age.
• Women born preterm were more likely to experience recurrent preterm birth and an increased risk of adverse outcomes in their offspring. A similar pattern was reported for fetal stillbirth and infant mortality among women born preterm.
• The lower the gestational age, the greater the risk of having less education.

Those are some not-insignificant effects; they’re also a rallying cry to political action on this as a public health issue.

Language zones of brain show human uniqueness

A new non-invasive brain scan tool, diffusion tensor imaging, provides the details of more complex human interconnections in this area compared to other primates.