Study links common diabetes drug to higher rate of birth defects
Is your medication harming the health of your baby? A new study in Annals of Internal Medicine has found a link between a commonly prescribed diabetes drug and genital birth defects. Men who used a drug called metformin in the three months before conception, saw higher rates of birth defects in their sons. This study adds to a growing area of research that looks at how paternal factors affect children’s health.
Q1 2018 to Q4 2021: Amount of fentanyl-laced pill seizures increased nearly 50x
The number of drugs laced with fentanyl has skyrocketed, according to a paper in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence. The research shows police confiscated more than two million fentanyl-laced pills in the last months of 2021 — that’s almost 50 times the amount found in 2018. Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that’s 30 to 50 times stronger than heroin. Scientists warn users to test their pills with test strips and always carry naloxone, a spray that can reverse an overdose.
Research says we adjust our speech to match expected accent of speaking partner
And finally… our vocal habits change depending on who we’re talking to. ‘Convergence’ is a linguistic concept that says we copy the accent of the person we’re speaking with. Research published in the journal Language shows that we do this even before hearing the accent. So, if we know someone’s from Alabama, our words will have a slight twang based on our expectation of the other person’s speech.
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