Category: Science and Health

One cannot see the exact site of the parting of the Red Sea, and it is pretty expensive to travel to the moon.  So, when I was allowed to become the first Israeli journalist since the start of the corona pandemic to go inside the site where Pfizer made its COVID-19 vaccines, I jumped at […]

Most patients admitted to hospitals with acute viral infections are given antibiotics as a precaution against bacterial co-infection, but this practice may not improve survival, new research suggests. Researchers investigated the impact of antibiotic use on survival in more than 2,100 patients in a hospital in Norway between 2017 and 2021 and found that giving […]

The sound of traffic can elevate your risk of hypertension, a new study has found.  A new peer-reviewed study, published in the journal JACC: Advances, analyzed over 240,000 participants and concluded that the sound of traffic can cause hypertension. Older studies have proven a causational relationship between the sounds of traffic and high blood pressure. […]

Women who gain too much weight during pregnancy put their offspring at risk for becoming overweight and diabetic later on, according to a new study.  Overnutrition for a fetus or newborn rewires developing brains to crave unhealthy food, researchers at Rutgers University said. Their findings were published in the peer reviewed journal Molecular Metabolism. To […]

A Health Ministry investigation committee has severely criticized the private Assuta Medical Center in Rishon Lezion for its mix-up of embryos last year that resulted in the mistaken insertion of an embryo into another woman instead of the biological mother. It also berated the ministry itself for poor supervision of in-vitro fertilization (IVF) units around […]

A new study found that high levels of caffeine in the blood correlate with lower body fat levels and an overall reduced risk of type-2 diabetes.  The study, published in the peer-reviewed British magazine BMJ, located the genetic variants responsible for the processing and breakdown of caffeine in the bloodstream. Researchers found that there is a […]

US gains in the early identification of children with autism, considered critical in enabling them to reach their full potential, were largely wiped out by disruptions in evaluations in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, US health officials reported on Thursday. Such disruptions in connecting children to the services they need “could have long-lasting […]

The final chapter of Tractate Nazir opens on today’s daf with a mishnah that teaches this: Non-Jews do not have nazariteship. The Gemara will inquire about the source of this rule, citing the fact that the chapter of the Book of Numbers outlining the laws of naziriteship opens with the phrase: “Speak to the children […]

Can a person accomplish two goals with one act? That is the question raised on today’s daf by the students of Rabbi Shimon ben Yohai.  A pure nazir and a leper, what is the halakhah? May he shave one shaving and it will count for him for this and for that? Both a nazir at the end of […]

As regular students of Daf Yomi by now well know, sometimes when the rabbis start playing the what-if game, their imaginations lead them to concoct highly improbable scenarios. We saw one such scenario on yesterday’s daf, where the mishnah discussed a case in which a person informs two nazirites that he saw one of them become impure but he doesn’t know […]