Valerie Stull was 12 when she ate her first insect.

“I was on a trip with my parents in Central America and we were served fried ants,” she says. “I remember being so grossed out initially, but when I put the ant in my mouth, I was really surprised because it tasted like food — and it was good!”

The older you get, the less apt you may be to recognize that you’ve made an error.

In a new study, University of Iowa researchers devised a simple, computerized test to gauge how readily young adults and older adults realize when they’ve made a mistake.

In direct contradiction to marketing efforts claiming that hookah (water pipe) smoking is less hazardous to health than cigarettes, a new UCLA study published in the American Journal of Cardiology found that just a half-hour of hookah smoking resulted in the development of cardiovascular risk factors similar to what has been seen with traditional cigarette smoking.

Researchers have found that people exposed to air pollution levels well within UK guidelines have changes in the structure of the heart, similar to those seen in the early stages of heart failure.

Canadian researchers have built and validated an online calculator that empowers individuals to predict their risk of cardiovascular disease.

A team of researchers from Cologne and New York present proposals for the traffic management of the future. A dynamic and fair toll for road use could reduce congestion.

For the Inuit of Labrador in Canada, climate disaster has already arrived. These indigenous people form an intense bond with their land, hunting for food and fur. “People like to go out on the land to feel good,” says Noah Nochasak in the documentary Lament for the Land. “If they can’t go out on the land, travel a long ways to feel good, they don’t feel like people.”

Obesity increases a person’s risk for severe complications from influenza, including hospitalization and even death. It may also play a role in how flu spreads, according to a new study published in The Journal of Infectious Diseases. The findings suggest that obese adults infected with flu shed the virus for a longer time than adults who are not obese, potentially increasing the opportunity for the infection to spread to others.

Will they bite?

Hurricane Harvey was an unprecedented rain event that delivered five consistent days of flooding and storms to Texas last August. Now, research from UTSA Assistant Professor Vikram Kapoor in civil and environmental engineering has substantiated that the storm caused high levels of fecal contamination to be introduced into waterways draining into the Gulf of Mexico and impairing surface water quality.