Today's health and science

In G Health

Forget the long sterile corridors, antiseptic smells, and assembly-line feel. In this nursing home, the $34 million Leonard Florence Center for Living in Chelsea, elders rule. Residents decide when they want to get up, what they want to eat — and it’s all freshly cooked by specially trained nursing assistants who pull up chairs, fill their own plates, and join in the conversation.

Should a dental night guard wearer worry about BPA or other chemicals?

Dr. Florence T. Bourgeois questions the adequacy of the drug approval process.

New mothers and fathers show similar levels of the hormone oxytocin, which might be related to parent-infant bonding, but there were gender-specific differences in how parents behaved with their babies.

Zinc supplements worked quickly to block stomach acid in small studies of rats and humans (second item).

In Science & Innovation

The deaths of six Worcester firefighters in a 1999 blaze prompted scientists to develop better technology to find firefighters stranded inside burning buildings. In testing, several devices have cut the rescue time down to as little as seven minutes.

Around the world, half a billion people live with uncorrected vision problems, according to World Health Organization estimates, in part because eye specialists are rare in the developing world. But a team at the MIT Media Lab believes it can help restore sharp eyesight to many of these people, with a vision test that uses cellphones, an inexpensive clip-on eyepiece, and free software.

Are centipedes dangerous? Do they really have 100 legs?