Honey bees fly to flowers whenever the weather is right, and warmer autumns and winters are putting these crop pollinators at risk, researchers warn. Using climate and bee population models, a Washington State University team showed that longer and longer autumns with ideal flying weather increase the odds that bee colonies will collapse come spring.  “It’s not like this is something that can be expected 80 years from now,” lead author Kirti Rajagopalan, an assistant professor of biological systems engineering, said in a WSU news release. “It is a more immediate impact that needs to be planned for.” A potential intervention: Putting colonies into cold storage, where bees will cluster in their hive from October to April before too many workers wear out. The practice is relatively new.  But commercial beekeepers already rely on it to help manage logistics of moving more than 2 million hives from around the country to pollinate almond trees in California, researchers said. “A lot of beekeepers are already practicing this management technique of storing bees indoors because it has a lot of immediate potential to help in a number of ways,” study co-author Brandon Hopkins, a WSU entomologist, said in the news release.  He said the new study demonstrates that cold-storage has additional benefits for the survival of bee colonies in a changing climate. For the study, researchers used…  read on >  read on >

Most parents are torn about letting their middle or high school students take a sick day. “In some cases, the decision to keep kids home from school is clear, such as if the child is vomiting or has a high fever,” said Sarah Clark, co-director of the Mott Poll from University of Michigan Health C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital in Ann Arbor. “But parents often have to guess at whether their child’s report of ‘not feeling well’ represents a good reason to miss school.” In the latest poll — based on 1,300 responses last month from parents of 11- to 18-year-olds — 2 in 3 said their child frets about how missing school will affect their grades. The same number worry about missing friends or school activities.  For parents, deciding whether kids need a sick day rests mainly on whether they think they can get through the entire academic day, whether they’re contagious and whether they will miss a test, presentation or after-school activity, the poll revealed. How any symptoms are causing them to behave is also key. When it’s not clear just how sick a child is, more than half of parents are likely to keep them home, according to the poll. Another 25% send them to school and keep their fingers crossed. About 1 in 5 let the child decide. The same number said…  read on >  read on >

Vitamin supplements are a big business, with Americans spending roughly $45 billion out of more than $177 billion worldwide on pills, gummies and powders meant to boost health. About 59 million Americans regularly use some type of vitamin or supplement, spending an average $510 each year. But most folks are wasting that money, experts say. A balanced daily diet provides all the nutrients a person typically needs to maintain their health, said Dr. Matthew Silvis, vice chair of clinical operations for Penn State Health Family and Community Medicine. “If you have a well-balanced diet and you’re able to eat nutritious foods ― fruits, vegetables, etc. ― you don’t need a multivitamin or a supplement,” Silvis said in a news release. “The broad answer is most people don’t need them, despite the multibillion-dollar industry that the vitamin industry is,” he continued. “But there are populations of individuals who do need to consider a multivitamin or a supplement. And that is individualized.” Examples of people who do need specific supplements include: Pregnant women who need folic acid to prevent birth defects. Seniors with osteoporosis who can benefit from calcium and Vitamin D supplements. Vegans or people with Celiac disease who need a multivitamin to supplement the nutrients they aren’t absorbing from their diet. High-intensity athletes who regularly participate in draining workouts and fierce competition also might be…  read on >  read on >

Some people diagnosed with schizophrenia might instead be suffering from a rare visual condition that can cause other people’s faces to appear “demonic,” a new study argues. The condition, called prosopometamorphopsia (PMO), can cause others’ facial features to appear horrific — drooped, larger, smaller, out of position or stretched in disturbing ways. “Not surprisingly, people with prosopometamorphopsia often find it disturbing to look at other people’s faces,” researchers said on their website on the condition. “Fortunately, most cases last only a few days or weeks, but some cases perceive distortions in faces for years.” Unfortunately, this disorder in vision has led to a diagnosis of mental illness in some patients.  “We’ve heard from multiple people with PMO that they have been diagnosed by psychiatrists as having schizophrenia and put on anti-psychotics, when their condition is a problem with the visual system,” said senior study author Brad Duchaine, a professor of psychological and brain sciences and principal investigator of the Social Perception Lab at Dartmouth University. To help people understand PMO, Duchaine and his colleagues have produced the first case report to provide accurate and photorealistic examples of the facial distortions experienced by a specific patient with PMO. The patient, a 58-year-old man, sees faces without any distortions if they’re on a screen or on paper. But when he sees someone in person, their face appears…  read on >  read on >