Health Sciences

By the middle of the century, the number of days with temperatures above 95 degrees each year will triple in downtown Los Angeles, quadruple in portions of the San Fernando Valley and even jump five-fold in a portion of the High Desert in L.A. County, according to a new UCLA climate change study. The study, released Thursday, is the first to model the Southland's complex geography of meandering coastlines, mountain ranges and dense urban centers in high enough resolution to predict temperatures down to the level of micro climate zones, each measuring 2 1/4 square miles.

A large Southern California nutritional supplement company is in dire financial trouble after losing much of its business supplying Herbalife International Inc. after the sudden death of Herbalife founder Mark Hughes in May. Orange-based Global Health Sciences Inc. faces a Nov. 1 deadline to make a $12.4-million interest payment on $257.

Global Health Sciences Inc., a dietary and nutritional health supplement manufacturer, defaulted Wednesday on $257.8 million of debt after failing to make a scheduled $12.4-million interest payment to bondholders. The default came after the Orange-based company lost much of its business supplying Herbalife International Inc. following the sudden death of Herbalife founder Mark Hughes in May.

Motherhood, it seems, is not necessarily just for the young. Thanks to medical progress, the young-at-heart now qualify, too. Just ask Barbara Strong who, at 42, gave birth this year to a daughter, years after physicians told her she would never have children because of ovary damage from drug treatment for breast cancer. On a recent weekday morning, Strong, a psychiatrist, played with Christina, 8 months old, and Juliana, 1, the daughter she adopted with husband Robert Wilson.

When a woman stops making estrogen, her body notices. Hot flashes, night sweats, moodiness, foggy thinking — all can be part of the menopausal package. At first blush, the solution seems obvious: Take extra hormones, and the symptoms of menopause should vanish. Over the decades, millions of women have taken some form of hormone therapy to relieve symptoms of menopause or to prevent the bone-thinning disease osteoporosis. The treatment typically included Premarin, estrogen isolated from the urine of pregnant mares, combined with Provera, a synthetic version of the hormone progesterone.

UC Riverside's long-held dream to have a full medical school was badly battered last year when the state refused to pay for it and then national accreditors wouldn't allow it to open. Those denials were a blow to the UC system's proud tradition of adding campuses and programs to serve a growing state. Now, UC Riverside is making what national experts say is a rare second attempt to gain approval for a medical school. Campus officials say they have obtained alternative financial backing, worth about $10 million a year for a decade, from private donors, local government and the UC system in hopes that the medical school can enroll its first 50 students in fall 2013.

A long-running comparison of three diet plans found that the low-carbohydrate Atkins regimen and a Mediterranean diet rich in fish and nuts produced slightly greater weight loss than a low-fat program modeled on American Heart Assn. dietary guidelines.

Dismiss it as boring if you'd like, but "rabbit food" could be just what the doctor orders at your next ophthalmologist's visit. Eating the right vegetables, it now appears, may help to ward off some life-changing diseases such as cataracts and age-related macular degeneration, conditions you might otherwise come eye to eye with as you get older. Surprisingly, despite their reputation, carrots are probably not near the top of the list.

The risk of developing cancer from low levels of radiation may be three to four times greater than previously thought, a panel of scientists said Tuesday in a landmark report with broad public health implications. Similarly, the report said, children run a much higher risk of developing mental retardation and learning disabilities if they were exposed to radiation while in the womb, especially between the eighth and 15th weeks of gestation. But for most people, said Arthur C.

Circumcision is known to reduce a man's risk of HIV infection by at least half, but scientists don't know why. A new study offers support for the theory that removing the foreskin deprives troublesome bacteria of a place to live, leaving the immune system in much better shape to keep the human immunodeficiency virus at bay. Anyone who has ever lifted a rock and watched as the earth beneath it was quickly vacated by legions of bugs and tiny worms...