The pandemic may be over, but the virus is still around, and children, young adults, and pregnant women are susceptible.

When the H1N1 flu virus was first detected in the United States in April 2009, it set off all kinds of alarms. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) activated its emergency operations center. The director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak, which seemed to get started a month or two earlier in Mexico, to be a "public health emergency of international concern." By June, H1N1 was making people sick in over 70 countries, and the ...

Some tidbits from the expert committee that advised the government on the creation of new Dietary Guidelines.

Every five years, the federal government issues new Dietary Guidelines. A new set is scheduled to be released in December 2010 [the guidelines were released late, in January 2011], along with some kind of graphical representation (in the past, it's been a pyramid) that is supposed to communicate the content to the public in a catchy way. Most Americans are barely aware of the guidelines, but that doesn't mean they're inconsequential. They're used to set policy for school lunches, food stamps, and other ...

Sex isn't just for the young. Research is showing that older Americans are sexually active.

The sexuality that's such a big part of our teens and young adulthood has more staying power than younger people usually recognize and can continue to spice things up well into old age. Results from a University of Chicago survey published in 2007 suggested that over half of Americans continue to engage in sexual activities well into their 70s. Now another batch of findings from a survey conducted by researchers at Indiana University suggests that 20% to 30% of long-lived Americans are sexually active into ...

Editor's Note: Shelley Carson, a Harvard psychologist, has written Your Creative Brain, a book about the psychology and neuroscience of creativity, and steps you can take to become more creative. The book is co-published by Harvard Health Publications. Here are some excerpts from an interview with Carson.

What exactly is creativity?

The accepted definition in the field is that for something to be creative it has to be novel or original and be useful or adaptive to some portion of the population.

For something to be creative, it must be useful?

That part of the definition helps draw a distinction ...

Q. I have a severely arthritic hip. It's pretty clear that I'm a candidate for hip replacement. When I looked on the Internet, there were a lot of Web sites promoting "anterior hip replacement." What is it, and is it any better than the traditional approach?

A. Traditionally, orthopedic surgeons have approached the hip joint from the side and back when doing total replacement surgery. The incision used in this posterolateral approach, as it is called, is about six to nine inches long and is made along the side of the hip and the upper thigh. Anterior means front, and ...

Q. I am starting to have trouble reading. But I have heard that wearing glasses to help me read will make my eyesight worse. Is that true?

A. This is a common question. Many people believe that glasses can make eyesight worse, but that's more myth than reality.

Many of us start to have trouble reading in our mid-40s. The condition is called presbyopia (pronounced prez-bee-OH-pee-ah), and it is the natural loss of the focusing ability of the lens of the eye.

The lens is about the size of a shirt button. Because it can change shape, we are able ...