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In a recent US study of 1,815 disadvantaged mothers and their children, mothers who worked more than 35 hours per week were more likely to experience insufficient sleep compared with mothers who worked fewer hours, while children were more likely to experience insufficient sleep when their mothers worked between 20 and 40 hours.

Nonstandard work schedules—such as working evenings, nights, or week-ends—were linked with an increased likelihood of insufficient sleep for mothers but not their children.

People with lactose intolerance are at lower risk of suffering from lung, breast and ovarian cancers, according to a new study by researchers at Lund University and Region Skåne in Sweden.

"We found that people with lactose intolerance, who typically consume low amounts of milk and other dairy products, have a reduced risk of lung, breast and ovarian cancers", says Jianguang Ji, Associate Professor at Lund University and researcher at the Center for Primary Care Research in Malmö.

This news release is available in French.

Montreal, November 4, 2014 — Overfishing, climate change and pollution have reduced fish populations in Canadian lakes and rivers. While hatchery-raised fish could return numbers to normal, they aren't as well adapted to their new environments, and there's been concern that the wild population is "tainted" once it breeds with its domesticated counterparts.

Hot flushes are one of the most distressing conditions faced by women who have been treated for breast cancer, but they are not being adequately addressed by healthcare professionals and some women consider giving up their post cancer medication to try and stop them, a new study has shown.

BEER-SHEVA, Israel...November 4 2014 -- With the world facing a shortage of oncologists, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) researchers have determined that preclinical study of oncology may increase the number of students entering the field and may make them more empathetic and concerned about ethical issues of treatment.

Forestry experts of the French Institute for Agricultural Research INRA together with technicians from NEIKER-Tecnalia and the Chartered Provincial Council of Bizkaia felled radiata pine specimens of different ages in order to find out their resistance to gales and observe the force the wind needs to exert to blow down these trees in the particular conditions of the Basque Country.

A University of Tennessee, Knoxville, study finds that nonprofit organizations aiming to protect biodiversity show little evidence of responding to economic signals, which could limit the effectiveness of future conservation efforts.

The study is published this week in the academic journal Ecology and Evolution and can be read at http://bit.ly/1t8fT24.

NEW ORLEANS (November 4, 2014)—Starting with a simple DNA swab taken from fang marks on people bitten by snakes, an international research team correctly identified the species of the biting snake 100 percent of the time in a first-of-its-kind clinical study, according to data presented today at the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene's (ASTMH) Annual Meeting.

The study, conducted at three medical facilities in Nepal, found that if snake DNA could be isolated from the bite wound, the test identified the species of snake responsible every time.

Philadelphia, PA (November 4, 2014) — Obesity in a pregnant woman may increase the risk that her children will be born with congenital abnormalities of the kidney and urinary tract, according to a study that will be presented at ASN Kidney Week 2014 November 11¬–16 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia, PA.

NEW ORLEANS (November 4, 2014)—Across a broad swath of the southern United States, residents face a tangible but mostly unrecognized risk of contracting Chagas disease—a stealthy parasitic infection that can lead to severe heart disease and death—according to new research presented today at the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH) Annual Meeting.

WASHINGTON, DC – November 4, 2014 – Filoviruses like Ebola "edit" genetic material as they invade their hosts, according to a study published this week in mBio®, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology. The work, by researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, the Galveston National Laboratory, and the J. Craig Venter Institute, could lead to a better understanding of these viruses, paving the way for new treatments down the road.

[New Orleans, USA, 4 November 2014] Presented today at the 63rd annual meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASMTH), results of a multi-centre clinical trial in Africa, launched in 2008, to test the efficacy and tolerability of Artesunate-Mefloquine fixed-dose combination (ASMQ FDC) in children under 5 years of age with uncomplicated falciparum malaria showed that ASMQ FDC is as safe and efficacious as Artemether-Lumefantrine (AL) FDC – Africa's most widely adopted treatment.

Career and family, often seen as competing parts of life, can actually complement each other, and when young people's goals for the future encompass family and career, the outcome is more likely to be success in both arenas, according to Penn State researchers.

"I'm really interested in career development, but also how that interacts with family life," says Bora Lee, postdoctoral scholar, human development and family studies. "I was interested in how adolescents weighed their goals within work and family domains."

This news release is available in German.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge have managed to reconstruct the early stage of mammalian development using embryonic stem cells, showing that a critical mass of cells – not too few, but not too many – is needed for the cells to being self-organising into the correct structure for an embryo to form.