Is it possible for someone who has never had a peanut allergy to develop it all of a sudden? It apparently is. A woman had developed the allergy after receiving a lung transplant.

The 68-year-old woman, who had never had a peanut allergy, had a severe allergic reaction to the sandwich, according to a recent report of her case, which was published in August in the journal Transplantation Proceedings. But someone else did have a peanut allergy, it turned out: the donor who supplied the woman with a transplant lung.

It's a very rare occurrence for lung transplant recipients to acquire a food allergy from a donor organ, said lead case report author Dr. Mazen Odish, a fellow in pulmonary and critical care medicine at the University of California - San Diego Medical Center, who treated the woman.

It may be uncommon but this case shows that it happens. These may be isolated cases though as it has only been reported to have happened four or five times.

Read more on Live Science.

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We don't all have super memories or eidetic memories that would enable our brains to easily catalog and retrieve everything that we have seen, read, heard, felt, or experienced throughout our lives. Only a handful of people probably have that capacity, less than 1% of the population so how about the rest of us?

Well, Evelyn Lamb from Scientific American says there may be ways that would allow us to remember the digits in the new Mersenne prime. She shares those with us in her article.

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We know how satisfying it is to eat food especially when it's a very delicious treat or if it's our favorite food. But there may be a reason why we experience such a good feeling when we eat food.

New research reveals that a meal can trigger reward signals in the brain twice: first when the food is ingested and again when the food reaches the stomach.

The study, published this week in the journal Cell Metabolism, highlights how close interactions between the brain and the digestive system are able to reinforce food intake, and might provide a clue as to why we sometimes overeat the food we crave most.

Whether that is good news for us, perhaps it would depend on what we value most. Just right after the holidays, people might want to slow down from eating and get right onto the gym to workout. But with the lure of food will always be there and now we know why.

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People have been given inalienable rights by law as set in the Constitution which, for one, gives them the right to be free, make their own decisions without being impeded by anyone or anything. This is fundamentally based on the idea that humans have been born with free will and having the capacity to do what is good for them without stepping on other people's rights.

For animals, we never really thought about such and animal rights enshrined in animal welfare laws only govern how people should treat animals. However, we have to also take into consideration that animals, much like people, live in their own societies and communities. Happy is an elephant who is currently in the care of the Bronx Zoo and, since the death of an elephant companion in 2006, has lived alone.

For a member of a species renowned for both intelligence and sociality, the setting is far from natural. In the wild, Happy would share a many-square-mile home range with a lifelong extended family, their bonds so close-knit that witnessing death produces symptoms akin to post-traumatic stress disorder in humans. It would seem that Happy, despite the devotions of the people who care for her, is not living her best life.

So now, an advocacy group called the Nonhuman Rights Project is making a case for animals and has been fighting for Happy's release.

Since 2013, the group has filed lawsuits on behalf of four captive chimpanzees in New York and, in neighboring Connecticut, three elephants used in a traveling circus. They’ve lost those cases, but they have persuaded judges to take them seriously, and in October petitioned a New York state court to order Happy’s release. She wouldn’t be returned to the wild, but would be transferred to a sanctuary in California with more space and the company of other elephants.

Read more on The Atlantic.

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In a 60 Minutes Overtime episode, Paul McCartney bares himself and talks about his insecurities being a musician and songwriter. And in a moment of reminiscing, he shares an anecdote that he had with John Lennon which made him choke up a bit, revealing what Lennon said was his biggest fear. - via HuffPost

If you aren't the type to watch a fireworks display in the sky, perhaps you might find an enjoyable alternative in Bose-Einstein condensates. A miniature fireworks display has been found to be produced by these ultracold atoms as researchers switched the magnetic field's direction in order to produce density ripples that created these firework-like jet emissions.

(Image credit: Han Fu et al/Physical Review Letters)

It's puzzling to think about why children would have to suffer some of the most agonizing illnesses in life. At such a young age, they haven't done much in their lives neither have they experienced the various aspects of life, they probably haven't made any wrong lifestyle choices that got them to that point.

Still, children get leukemia. It may be because of genetics or things that their parents were exposed to that made some alterations in their gene pool and caused them to be more susceptible to developing leukemia. I don't know, those are just mere speculations on my part. But, cancer scientist Mel Greaves was baffled by it and he went on a quest to find the answer. And he has.

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As scientists continue to try and figure out how the world started and how life formed in the beginning, some theories have emerged to explain the phenomenon. One of those theories is the RNA world hypothesis which states that early chemical reactions formed these self-replicating RNA which then became the basis for the origins of life.

In trying to test out the hypothesis, scientists found that there may have been one ingredient in RNA that is not found in modern RNA but was perhaps quite crucial during the early stages of the universe. Early RNA, they say, included a chemical called inosine.

They were able to find out about this by replicating conditions found in a freshwater lake or pond, a volcanic lake, or a crater lake. Then they added the RNA and observed its reactions. Inserting the inosine, they found that the RNA's reactions sped up compared to the usual nucleobase pairings that we have today.

Some scientists believe that this may not be the only chemical that was involved at the beginning of everything.

Sutherland also noted that the field is generally moving on from a pure "RNA world hypothesis" into one that sees more components mixed into the cauldron that created life. Those include lipids, peptides, proteins and energy sources. He added that in researchers' minds, "It's a less purist RNA world than it used to be."

Learn more on Live Science.

(Image credit: NASA/U. S. Geological Survey/Norman Kuring/Kathryn Hansen via Live Science)

I wouldn't be surprised to find a whole city existing beneath London, if ever there will be. So many things have happened throughout its history that places just get buried underneath rubble and almost forgotten until somebody digs it up, and that's exactly what a group of archaeologists did to find an ice house under the streets of central London.

How did it get there? They suggest that it had existed in the late 18th century and was covered after the area was bombed during the war. Esther Addley shares more about this discovery on The Guardian.

(Image credit: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian)

We have all seen heist thriller films and most of the time, they are just a ragtag group of individuals who are trying to scrap some cash to get by the next couple of months. They have families to feed and they feel that there are no other ways to make an easy buck, so they turn to the world of crime.

Some of the more audacious heists target high-value items like jewelry or art collections, but in a recent incident that happened last July in Rotterdam, thieves were able to whisk away 112 tons of cobalt. It's risky because the metal is toxic and the logistics of the operation would seem impossible, but it happened. And nobody is saying anything about it.

Read more on Bloomberg Businessweek.

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Is this another plot to stop the truth from getting out? This year has been plagued with so much controversy regarding alternative facts and fake news, and attacks against the free press that it's not even surprising that they would try to hit them where it would hurt the most.

If people can't have access to information as soon as possible, it would be difficult for them to make sense of what's happening in the world. Of course, you might think, well who reads newspapers nowadays anyway? True, but a lot of people still depend on their broadsheets for information. Read more about it on The BBC.

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Have you, at some point, thought that the holidays have all been excessively commercialized, losing the true meaning of why we even celebrate it? Have you become disillusioned with people simply making Christmas as an excuse to spend more money and put out lavish shows of prosperity or wealth? Well, you're not alone.

“People have complained about the excessive commercialization of Christmas ever since its incarnation in the mid-19th century,” said Lisa Jacobson, a UC Santa Barbara professor of history. “There’s still ambivalence about the commercialization of Christmas. I don’t think that ambivalence has ever entirely disappeared, but it was probably more pronounced in the 19th century than it is now.”

Shocking. So what happened back in the 19th century that made people think that Christmas was too commercialized? It might have something to do with the "Scrooges".

(Image credit: UCSB)

Let us try to explore how stars and planets form with this interactive display that NASA's Elizabeth Landau had created to show us how our world and other planetary systems in the universe came to be, from their conception to their end, and resurrection.

How did we get here? How do stars and planets come into being? What happens during a star's life, and what fate will its planets meet when it dies? Come along on this interstellar journey through time and scientific detective work.

(Image credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Things happen all the time which we don't have any control over and all we can do is hope and pray that something or someone will come out to help us.

Two fishermen set out to sail from the coasts of Costa Rica on Dec. 1, but due to strong winds they found themselves adrift somewhere between Grand Cayman and Jamaica.

In sailor mythology, salvation in these dire situations sometimes comes from a helpful mermaid or a guiding star. On Friday, however, the lost fishermen were rescued by the Empress of the Seas — a massive, 11-deck cruise ship.

Ted Miller, spokesman for Royal Caribbean International, said the cruise ship spotted a signal light coming from the fishermen’s vessel. The Empress sailed toward them and lowered a smaller boat, called a tender, containing a crew that helped retrieve the stranded sailors.

Read more about their story on The Washington Post.

(Image credit: Jared Eberle/Facebook via The Washington Post)

It might seem like a no-brainer for us to think that parents who are more involved in their children's lives would positively affect their growth and development. But there have been several studies that show the nuances of what it really means to do parenting well, and how both parents contribute to their child.

In this article, we focus on dads and how the "Father Effect" starts very early on and continues until children become adults. Joshua A. Krisch tells us what it truly means to be involved in a child's life especially for dads who conventionally feel that they do not necessarily need to exert as much effort into rearing their children and doing the bare minimum would be enough. Studies suggest otherwise.

In a nutshell, this is what the Father Effect is:

“The Father Effect” is the umbrella term for the benefits of a paternal presence. These effects can be numerous when fathers actively participate in family life. “There needs to be a minimum amount of time spent together, but the quality of time is more important than the quantity of time,” Amato says. “Just watching television together, for example, isn’t going to help much.”

Read on for more on Fatherly.

(Image credit: Kelsey Wroten for Fatherly)