Food safety practices that Americans take for granted — washing hands with soap, refrigeration, and not cutting raw meat and vegetables on the same surface without disinfection — are not widely practiced in other places around the world, and researchers in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences want to change that.

Researchers at The Johns Hopkins University report statistical evidence that children exposed to airborne coarse particulate matter — a mix of dust, sand and non-exhaust tailpipe emissions, such as tire rubber — are more likely to develop asthma and need emergency room or hospital treatment for it than unexposed children.

Researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center uncovered a novel gene they named THOR while investigating previously unexplored regions of the human genome — or the human genome’s dark matter.

Survivors of the first known Ebola outbreak, which occurred in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1976, may be key to development of vaccines and therapeutic drugs to treat future outbreaks, according to a new study led by researchers at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.

Children who routinely eat their meals together with their family are more likely to experience long-term physical and mental health benefits, a new study shows.

Monkeys who catch Zika virus through bites from infected mosquitoes develop infections that look like human Zika cases, and may help researchers understand the many ways Zika can be transmitted.

Research led by the University of Liverpool has revisited a study carried out 175 years ago which compared the health and life expectancy of people in different parts of the country, including Liverpool, to see if its findings still held true. They found that stark differences still exist and that people living in Liverpool still had lower life expectancy than those living in the rural area of Rutland.

From North Dakota to Ohio to Pennsylvania, hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, has transformed small towns into energy powerhouses. While some see the new energy boom as benefiting the local economy and decreasing U.S. reliance on foreign oil, others fear the potential health and environmental consequences that come along with fracking.

Approaching the second half of the century, the United States is likely to experience increases in the number of days with extreme heat, the frequency and duration of heat waves, and the length of the growing season. In response, it is anticipated that societal, agricultural and ecological needs will increase the demand on already-strained natural resources like water and energy. University of Illinois researchers have developed new, high-resolution climate models that may help policymakers mitigate these effects at a local level.

The most effective way of preventing seasonal influenza is to be vaccinated each autumn. The reason that people are encouraged to get vaccinated annually is because flu virus can cause severe disease. One of the problems is that there are many different flu viruses circulating around the world and which ones circulate changes over time.