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Even small amounts of air pollution appear to raise the risk of a condition in pregnant women linked to premature births and lifelong neurological and respiratory disorders in their children, new Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health research suggests.

Evolution can go quickly when it has to - at least for small organisms. Researchers exposed a natural setting in Denmark to artificial climate change and discovered that soil just half a degree warmer caused the genome of small worms to change surprisingly quickly.

Can evolution keep up with the current rapid climate change? The answer to this question is very important regarding the animals, plants and microorganisms that we humans will share the planet with in future.

Researchers at Aarhus University have now unravelled part of the answer from some small worms.

Researchers at McMaster University have found that a single minute of very intense exercise produces health benefits similar to longer, traditional endurance training.

The findings put to rest the common excuse for not getting in shape: there is not enough time.

"This is a very time-efficient workout strategy," says Martin Gibala, a professor of kinesiology at McMaster and lead author on the study. "Brief bursts of intense exercise are remarkably effective."

Researchers at McMaster University have found that a single minute of very intense exercise produces health benefits similar to longer, traditional endurance training.

The findings put to rest the common excuse for not getting in shape: there is not enough time.

"This is a very time-efficient workout strategy," says Martin Gibala, a professor of kinesiology at McMaster and lead author on the study. "Brief bursts of intense exercise are remarkably effective."

Sensitive and less emotionally intelligent people are more likely to be vulnerable to online dating scams.

That is the finding of a study by Dr Martin Graff of the University of South Wales presented today, Tuesday 26 April 2016, at the British Psychological Society Annual Conference in Nottingham.

Brown fat cells can burn fat to generate heat. University of Bonn researchers have discovered a new method to measure the activity of brown fat cells in humans and mice. The researchers showed that microRNA-92a can be used as an indirect measure for the activity of energy consuming brown fat cells. They showed that a small blood sample was sufficient. Results were published in Nature Communications, a well-known scientific journal.

In people with osteoporosis, one fracture often leads to more fractures, and potentially a future of pain, disability, and poor quality of life. While studies have shown that such high-risk patients benefit from appropriate medication to reduce future fracture risk, more research is needed on the effect of osteoporosis medications on fracture healing.

• Families spend 2.5 times more on emergency room and hospitalization
• Low-income children are less likely to see specialists or get epinephrine
• More life-threatening reactions likely due to lack of education and access

CHICAGO --- Low-income families of children with food allergies spend 2.5 times more on emergency department and hospitalization costs nationally, according to new Northwestern Medicine research.

The Sapayoa, a rainforest bird from Central and South America, is an evolutionary enigma--genetic analysis shows that its closest relatives are bird species living across the ocean in Asia and Africa. Now, new research in The Auk: Ornithological Advances demonstrates for the first time that its natural history links it to its evolutionary relatives thousands of miles away.

Since 2006, several published studies have associated the use of some acid suppression medications in hospitalized high-risk babies with infections, necrotizing enterocolitis and increased risk of death. Those medications - histamine-2 receptor antagonists such as ranitidine (Zantac and others), and proton pump inhibitors such as esomeprazole (Nexium and others) - were originally approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for use in adults and older children.

California is known for its high biological diversity. The state encompasses a wide variety of habitats, from temperate coastal scrub and cool redwood forests to high-elevation conifer forests and grasslands that are home to an equally diverse variety of plants and animals. Biologists have been intensively studying and characterizing the biodiversity of California for centuries.

Researchers at University of Montreal have created a programmable DNA thermometer that is 20,000x smaller than a human hair. This scientific advance reported this week in the journal Nano Letters may significantly aid our understanding of natural and human designed nanotechnologies by enabling to measure temperature at the nanoscale.

The next generation of vaccines may soon see the light of day, because Danish researchers have discovered a completely new and simple method which sets new standards for the development of vaccines.

Sophia Antipolis, 27 April 2016: China is paying the price of adopting a western lifestyle with soaring childhood obesity, shows a 29 year study in nearly 28 000 children and adolescents published today in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology.1 Less than 1% of children and adolescents were obese in 1985 compared to 17% of boys and 9% of girls in 2014. The authors speculate that boys may be fatter than girls because of a societal preference for sons.

Writing in the May issue of The Lancet Oncology, leading oncologists from the UK and EU express their support for the UK remaining in Europe. In doing so, they join many other scientists and clinicians [1] who have publically declared their support for remaining in the EU when Britain votes in the referendum on June 23, 2016.