EUREKA!

EUREKA!

CAMPUS

Eater Beware

Mercury in seafood linked to ALS.

Consuming certain types of fish and seafood may increase the risk of developing amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), according to a new study presented by lead author and Geisel professor Elijah Stommel at the 2017 meeting of the American Academy of Neurology. “For most people, eating fish is part of a healthy diet,” says Stommel. “But questions remain about the possible impact of mercury in fish.” Researchers surveyed the eating habits of more than 500 participants, including nearly 300 who have ALS, in order to determine the amount of mercury consumed annually by each individual in the study. They discovered that seafood eaters exposed to the highest levels of mercury in their diet faced twice the risk of developing ALS compared to other consumers. The study authors also stressed the health benefits of eating fish such as salmon and sardines while cautioning against shark and swordfish, which rank among the most mercury-laden foods.

Fraudulent

Fraud

Trump claim gets thrown under the bus.

»> In February President Trump asserted that he and former Republican senator Kelly Ayotte would have won the 2016 elections in New Flampshire were it not for thousands of illegal voters bused in from Massachusetts. Government professors Michael Flerron and Sean Westwood, working with quantitative social science postdoc David Cottrell, scoured election return results from each of the state’s 259 vote-tabulating towns and found nothing in the data to indicate large-scale fraud. Further, the researchers found no photographic evidence of buses full of Massachusetts voters crossing state lines on Election Day. “Trump’s claims about a tainted election in New Flampshire are at best unsupported and at worst an intentional mistruth,” the research trio concluded in an analysis published in The Washington Post.