Category: Science and Health

Jewish women of Ashkenazi origin have a 1-in-40 chance of developing a gene mutation that causes breast cancer.  The mutation, which occurs on the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene, increases the breast cancer risk for young women and raises the risk as they age. The chance of getting breast cancer from these gene mutations is significantly […]

Today’s daf has a number of moving meditations on the value and power of Torah. If you haven’t read it yet, I want to encourage you to do so — both because they are beautiful, and because they are not the part of the daf that we’re going to focus on here. The Talmud today […]

Ancient Roman citizens had three names: the praenomen, the nomen and the cognomen. The praenomen was the name their parents gave them. The nomen was the name of their extended family (what today we might call their last name). And the cognomen was an additional name that gave further identifying information about an individual, either […]

The mishnah on our daf begins chapter 8 of Tractate Nedarim. The forsworn item in our mishnah today is wine. In recent weeks we have studied vows to abstain from cooked foods, pickled foods, fish, milk, meat, dates, grapes, olives, cabbage, beans, garlic, lentils, vegetables, and grains — among other consumables. Generally, commentators view this […]

If everyone would take the time to to walk in a silly an inefficient manner as shown in an iconic 1970 Monty Python for just a few minutes each day, it can help the world reach global physical activity targets, a new study has found. The findings of this study, fun facts of which can […]

For many years, people with mental health problems have hidden their condition from friends and even relatives because of the stigma attached to psychiatric illness.  Six years ago, people with mental health challenges agreed to have life-sized posters of themselves displayed at Boston’s Logan Airport in a project called “Deconstructing Stigma.” Now, after a year […]

People tend to draw a clear line between logic and emotion as it’s exciting to fall for someone although there are signs the person may be problematic.  Love can feel like an emotion that upsets our stomachs and turns off the voice of reason. In practice, from when humanity started, people began to understand this […]

An Israeli public hospital located only 21 kilometers from the Gaza border that regularly treats the victims of Palestinian terrorist attacks has launched a virtual clinic for Arabs from the Palestinian territories. Samson Assuta Ashdod University Hospital opened the clinic this past summer, using advanced telemedicine technologies to treat Palestinians over the internet. Now, it […]

Following a Mediterranean diet reduces the risk of heart disease, women’s strokes, cognitive decline, Alzheimer’s disease, excess weight, rheumatoid arthritis and depression, and it improves sleep – but that’s not all. Now, Australian researchers have determined that it can also improve fertility in both women and men.  Writing in the peer-reviewed, online journal Nutrients under […]