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Everyone gets hiccups. Fetuses as young as eight weeks experience them, and newborns often do, too. And while some drink water awkwardly to treat hiccups — which can last up to an hour — in rare occurrences, they can be chronic, lasting days, weeks or months. So what's with this involuntary muscle reaction? And how can you address it quickly and effectively?

Dogs love peanut butter— but just because they go nuts over that delicious goodness does not mean every type of peanut is safe for your furry friend. We chatted with Dr. Tim Hunt about which common peanuts are safe to feed your pooch!

Can old-time music lower your blood pressure? Probably not over the long term, but the paper is worth a "listen." It's not the most rigorous study, and there are too many confounders, but any excuse to take in some Mozart or Strauss is welcome. They can keep the ABBA.

Recently, we chatted with Science Blogger Dan Broadbent, founder of the blog-site A Science Enthusiast, and his corresponding Facebook page, which has more than 147,000 followers. Dan tells us he created the page to "increase science literacy and promote critical thinking." Hey, that's what we're all about, too!

Emissions from pizza ovens may be a big problem.

Are you more clever than your fridge? Yes you are -- right now. But if you build a network of algorithms that can listen to feedback, it can update its network to get the right answers. This is deep learning -- and it’s learning from you.

For those with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, the unfamiliar can be paralyzing and they need more ritual and routine to offset the chaos of the outside world. A new study examined how endocannabinoids -- natural messengers in the body chemically similar to the active compound in marijuana, and known to generally reduce the activity of neurons -- play a role in how the brain controls this fundamental process.

People who already believe in the benefits of "brain training" may be more likely to participate in a study that is explicitly about the benefits ... of brain training. Obviously, such self-selection will bias the results, and the placebo effect can magnify them.

Twice a year, when I visit my in-laws in Poland, I get to dabble in the soft science of linguistics in my futile attempt to learn the Polish language. Few people outside my immediate family can understand me because what I think of as “speaking” others perceive as caveman-like grunts with a Yankee accent.

There sure are a lot of toxicology "experts" out there on the web, and they really don't like anything that is sweet (except maybe when they sell it). We recently wrote about sucralose (Splenda), which is trashed by these "Internut" know-nothings despite the fact that its safety profile is about as good as you'll ever see. But, these I-nuts are even more verbal about aspartame -- and the more verbal they are, the more they get it wrong.

Injuries are part and parcel of soccer. Sure enough, they do not seem to be decreasing, even though most top-level teams have embedded sports medicine into their operations. But if teams applied the same approach to the act of kicking a ball, as it does to overall skill development, rates of injury could decline significantly.

As people tend to get older, decisions about topics such as health and retirement can be a bit more challenging. The difficult decisions we make later in life are often important and can impact our lives substantially, meaning there may be fewer opportunities to recover from any bad decisions we make.

1. An unknown environmental group got a gaggle of activists together and tried to get us banned in Google as a spam site. Google is terrific about responding, of course, but they are also good about checking on those things to see, so we were back up and running soon enough.
They also paid someone to do a Distributed Denial of Service (DD0S) attack, which knocked off our site for a little bit. We are still tracking the location of the attack but our server company kicked into gear to stop them.

Vitamin D is one of a list of nutrients thought to be valuable in preventing, or treating, a long list of conditions. But according to researchers from the University of Alberta, for most conditions linked to vitamin D the evidence is weak, if not completely non-existent.

Attorney Bill Marler has collected $600 million suing and settling foodborne-illness cases. Right now, he's zeroing in on Chipotle over its E. coli and norovirus outbreaks. If your company does not want to be sued for poisoning customers, don't sell these six things.

The American Council on Science and Health is pleased to announce that the Board of Trustees appointed eight new members to our renowned Board of Scientific Advisors yesterday afternoon.

Researchers at Notre Dame University have been able to engineer a switch on immune T cell receptors, enhancing their capacity to recognize foreign proteins on cancer cells, which allows for precision targeting and killing.

Can calorie labeling really help people eat less? And if so, what type of label works best? A new study indicates that labels do help — and it may not make much difference for many people what type of label is presented.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer says it doesn't know if coffee causes cancer, which is a switch from 1991 when the agency, an arm of the World Health Organization, said it did. That's bad news for those who want to trust IARC's recommendations, because its reasons to reverse course on coffee are no more valid than its reason to have declared it possibly carcinogenic to humans in the first place.

Five different drugs, or drug combinations, are now available to help with weight loss. But which would be best for particular individuals? A new study provides some answers to this important question.

Often, experienced chemists can look at the structure of a chemical and make good guess about whether it will be toxic. But "eyeball toxicology" is not foolproof. Many of us got it wrong with sucralose. We were suspicious that it might be toxic. But it isn't, and here's why.

A recent meta-analysis published in BMJ Open journal suggests that LDL, which is commonly known as 'bad' cholesterol, does not increase the rate of death from heart disease. But before dumping your statins, it's important to review key flaws in the data.

When the sun is out, the boats are charged up and in the water: but swimmers nearby could be in trouble. Often undetected, electric shock drowning (ESD) is the cause of several fatalities each year, and it's entirely preventable.

Researchers have developed a new method of predicting disease progression in gliobastoma patients who have undergone standard treatment.

Have you ever met someone and, right off the bat, had the feeling that you could trust them? Next question: Was that person good looking? It turns out that if they were, your decision to trust them may have been out of your control. A new study shows that the same is true with "tweens." It's something to consider as our children venture out into the world on their own.