Lucas Franki is an associate editor for MDedge News, and has been with the company since 2014. He has a BA in English from Penn State University and is an Eagle Scout.
News
Placebo effect can be found in a cup of coffee
Plus: Humble shopping carts become diagnostic tools and dirty dentures become homes for respiratory pathogens.
News
Low-calorie tastes sweeter with a little salt
Plus: Indiana loses its biggest Butt, and sugarless sweeteners lose the aftertaste.
News
The road to weight loss is paved with collusion and sabotage
Plus: Taiwanese mosquitoes face a robotic foe, and surgical knots face the cold eye of physics.
News
The enemy of carcinogenic fumes is my friendly begonia
Also: Driving the gastrointestinal highway and pulling the plug on an unsupervised chatbot.
News
Ancient plague, cyclical pandemics … history lesson?
Plus: AI detects invisible concussions and a janitor does more than clean.
News
People still want their medical intelligence in human form
Plus: Finding humor in the temporal lobe and comparing reproductive inequality in mammals.
News
The antimicrobial peptide that even Pharma can love
Faster wound healing comes in waves, and a cancer drug that eats bugs.
News
Boys may carry the weight, or overweight, of adults’ infertility
Plus: The promise of fecal beads and the air of sleep-dieting.
News
Medical-level empathy? Yup, ChatGPT can fake that
Plus: Fishy sperm, an even more fishy sperm donor, and aviation-related sleep deserts.
News
Drive, chip, and putt your way to osteoarthritis relief
Plus: Gut diversity gets measured and dog walking gets dangerous.
News
Living the introvert’s dream: Alone for 500 days, but never lonely
Plus: Rapid evolution in the skin microbiome and a step toward prediction of adult height.
News
Previously unknown viral families hide in the darnedest places
Plus: The moose who came to dinner and the mouse that said you were stressed.
News
Lack of food for thought: Starve a bacterium, feed an infection
Plus: An iguana trades mycobacteria for cake, while humans sacrifice cake to the god of allergies.
News
Sweaty treatment for social anxiety could pass the sniff test
Plus: MOF-Jet gives needle-phobics a shot in the arm, and data-mining provides a hippocampal close-up.
News
The air up there: Oxygen could be a bit overrated
Plus: Assume the position … for sleeping, and COVID’s connection to UFO sightings.