Scientists have long known that diet shapes the immune system. Now, a UC San Francisco team has found that even a brief dietary change can substantially change how the body responds to skin irritation, at least in mice.

When scientists fed mice a high-fat diet for just a few days, the mice had a much worse reaction to an irritating cream. And the skin stayed on alert even after the mice returned to a low-fat diet and the inflammation cleared, responding more strongly the next time it was exposed to the cream.

The findings suggest that short-term diet may have just as much an effect as body weight when it comes to inflammation.

“Long-term dietary habits absolutely matter for health, but our study ...

Most of us could spend our entire lives looking at the night sky and see very few changes. The moon becomes more or less illuminated, the planets drift placidly through the sky, satellites and the ISS intrude for a few moments at a time, and the bright, momentary streak of a meteor punctuates the occasional evening of stargazing.

If we’re really lucky, we get a chance to witness one of the prominent comets: a regular visitor like Halley’s Comet, or a once-in-several-millennia comet like Hale-Bopp. A very small number of us might be truly fortunate and witness a distant supernova.

But the apparent uneventfulness of the night sky is an illusion, even for those with a typical backyard telescope. It’s the result of a selection bias based on our ability to see only visible light...

Scientists exploring the links between a spinal cord injury, inflammation and immune function have turned their attention to a genome-level analysis of the gut microbial community, with early study results offering hints at potential new approaches to aid healing.

In mice, refeeding a strain of bacteria that was depleted after spinal cord injury (SCI) lowered inflammation and stabilized weight loss...

Scientists have uncovered seven surprising stages that space rocks go through as they hurtle toward Earth, revealing that melting and violent fragmentation, rather than simple evaporation, determine their fate. The discovery could help explain why meteorites scatter across the ground and how dangerous asteroids explode in Earth’s atmosphere.

Scientists have gained a clearer understa...