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The advice to ?feed a cold, starve a fever? may be right after all, researchers have discovered. Until now, most doctors and nutritionists have rejected it as myth. But Dutch scientists have found that eating a meal boosts the type of immune response that destroys the viruses responsible for colds, while fasting stimulates the response that destroys the bacterial infections responsible for most fevers.

?To our knowledge, this is the first time that such a direct effect has been demonstrated,? says Gijs van den Brink of the Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam.
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Leena Peltonen of UCLA has discovered the genetic basis for lactose intolerance. Her study supports the theory that retaining the ability to digest milk evolved only in some peoples during the past ten thousand years, as an adaptation to dairy farming.

For the majority of people in the world, including most southern European, Asian and African populations, lactose intolerance is normal. It sets in at weaning or shortly after, when the body stops producing lactase, the enzyme it needs to digest the milk sugar lactose. Without lactase, lactose passes through the stomach undigested and reaches the bacteria in the large intestine. There bacteria feed on it, producing by-products that can make people feel gassy and nauseous.
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Researchers suspect that the strong magnetic fields produced by some electric appliances and vehicles increase the risk of miscarriage. ?The studies really represent state-of-the-art research into the causes of pregnancy loss,? says epidemiologist David Savitz of the University of North Carolina.

A study led by De-Kun Li, a reproductive epidemiologist at the Kaiser Foundation Research Institute in Oakland, California, asked 1,063 women around San Francisco who were in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy to spend a day wearing a meter around their waists that measured magnetic field levels every 10 seconds.
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A woman was attacked by a big ?Mystery Cat? in Scotland and has bite marks on her thigh to prove it. The woman, who does not want her name released, says the animal grabbed hold of her upper leg and hip, ripping her trousers, and leaving three puncture wounds on her thigh. ?It was a spur of the moment attack and I screamed out in pain,? she says. ?The animal was very fast and came out of nowhere. It wasn?t growling or anything so I don?t think it could have been a dog.?

Wilfred Simpson, 81, who was walking with the victim when the animal pounced, says the cat was the size of a Labrador but with a long thin body and the movements of a cat. ?I could see her trousers were all torn and she had bite marks along the back of her leg,? he says.
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