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The number of couples in which the woman has a higher level of university studies than her male partner is growing steadily and in many countries this trend surpasses the opposite situation, which historically has been the predominant. This is the conclusion reached by the Centre for Demographic Studies of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (CED-UAB), which conducted a research in 56 countries to study the effects an increase in education levels amongst women are having on heterosexual relationship patterns.

Monkeys shy away from bystanders during copulation, irrespective of the bystanders' gender or rank. The new study, by Anne Overduin-de Vries and her team from the Biomedical Primate Research Centre in the Netherlands, also suggests that sneaky sex is opportunistic rather than a tactical deception i.e. intentional hiding of sexual behavior. Their work is published online in Springer's journal, Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology.

URBANA - People tend to think of ozone as something in the upper atmosphere that protects the earth's surface from UV radiation. At the ground level, however, ozone is a pollutant that damages crops, particularly soybean.

Lisa Ainsworth, a University of Illinois associate professor of crop sciences and USDA Agricultural Research Service plant molecular biologist, said that establishing the exposure threshold for damage is critical to understanding the current and future impact of this pollutant.

Four new reservoirs linked to rice cultivation built in the middle basin of the Guadiana river in the middle of the 1990's have allowed various migratory dabbling duck species to significantly increase in number during the winter. Researchers at the University of Extremadura propose that Vegas Altas del Guadiana is turned into a new Special Protection Area for Birds.

High levels of vitamin D are associated with protection against bladder cancer, according to a multidisciplinary study coordinated by molecular biologists and epidemiologists from the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO), the conclusions of which are being published today in the Journal of National Cancer Institute (JNCI) .

The study has been led by Núria Malats, head of the Genetic and Molecular Epidemiology Group, and Francisco X. Real, from the Epithelial Carcinogenesis Group, at the CNIO.

Of course, pet owners may base their choice of animal companions on personality but, as with humans, appearance may play a large part in the selection of partner. For reasons on which the reader is free to speculate, in many human societies curly hair represents a highly desirable trait – Sam’s song in “Casablanca” recognizes this and generations of hairdressers have grown rich by offering perms.

Arboreal tarantulas are known from a few tropical places in Asia, Africa, South and Central America and the Caribbean. These tarantulas generally have a lighter build, thinner bodies and longer legs, better suited for their habitat. They have increased surface area at the ends of their legs, allowing them to better climb different surfaces, while their light build makes them more agile.

High birth weight, rapid weight gain and having an overweight mother who smokes can all increase the risk of a baby becoming obese later in childhood, research by experts at The University of Nottingham has found.

The study, published in the latest edition of the journal Archives of Disease in Childhood, also discovered that children who were breastfed and were introduced to solid food later had a slightly reduced chance of becoming overweight.

In the largest prospective study to date of children with early and later manifestation of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) compared to children without ASD, researchers found two distinct patterns of language, social and motor development in the children with ASD. Published in the journal Child Development, the study found that early in development, children who display early signs of ASD show greater initial delay across multiple aspects of development compared to children whose ASD symptoms emerge later.

The respected national Institute of Medicine estimates that $750 billion is lost each year to wasteful or excessive health care spending. This sum includes excess administrative costs, inflated prices, unnecessary services and fraud — dollars that add no value to health and well-being.

If those wasteful costs could be corralled without sacrificing health care quality, how might that money be better spent?

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Researchers from Brown University have shown for the first time how ingesting too much silver can cause argyria, a rare condition in which patients' skin turns a striking shade of grayish blue.

"It's the first conceptual model giving the whole picture of how one develops this condition," said Robert Hurt, professor of engineering at Brown and part of the research team. "What's interesting here is that the particles someone ingests aren't the particles that ultimately cause the disorder."

PHILADELPHIA — Survivors of many common cancers enjoy a mental and physical health-related quality of life equal to that of adults who have not had cancer, but survivors of other cancers are in poorer health, according to results published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – Oct. 30, 2012 – Beating cancer is just the first step.

More than one third of the 12.6 million cancer survivors in the United States have physical or mental problems that put their overall health in jeopardy, according to researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center.

Researchers from Inserm and CNRS from the Institute for genetics and molecular and cellular biology (IGBMC) and from the Research Institute at the Strasbourg school of biotechnology (Irebs) have focussed their efforts on PARG, currently thought to be a promising new therapeutic target in the treatment of cancer. Their work has revealed the role of this molecule in regulating gene expression. The results were published on 25 October 2012 in the on-line Molecular Cell review.

Scientists have discovered a molecular 'tell' in laboratory experiments that could help doctors determine the severity of a patient's prostate cancer.

Cancer of the prostate – the most common male cancer in the UK – presents in two distinct ways: a low-risk type, which may never cause any symptoms, and a high-risk form that needs treatment to prevent it spreading to other parts of the body.

Knowing which type of prostate cancer each patient has – some 40,000 British men per year – is therefore essential to ensuring they receive the correct treatment.