Body

PHILADELPHA - New research is lighting up yet another reason for women to quit smoking. In a study published online in the journal Menopause, researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania report the first evidence showing that smoking causes earlier signs of menopause – in the case of heavy smokers, up to nine years earlier than average – in white women with certain genetic variations.

Medical associations widely recommend that women visit their obstetricians and primary care doctors shortly after giving birth, but slightly fewer than half make or keep those postpartum appointments, according to a study by Johns Hopkins researchers.

The researchers found that women with pregnancy complications were more likely to see a doctor post-delivery, but overall, visit rates were low.

Researchers have identified a new species of mysterious beaked whale based on the study of seven animals stranded on remote tropical islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans over the past 50 years.

Beaked whales, a widespread but little-known family of toothed whales distantly related to sperm whales, are found in deep ocean waters beyond the edge of the continental shelf throughout the world's oceans.

In a range of species, females show clear preferences when it comes to the choice of their partner – they decide on the basis of external features like antler size or plumage coloration whether a male will be a good father to her offspring, or whether he will provide them with good genes. Erik Postma, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Zurich, has now demonstrated that humans have similar skills. The faces of riders that performed better during the Tour de France were deemed more attractive, showing that we can assess a men's endurance performance by looking at his face.

A national poll from the University of Utah's Huntsman Cancer Institute shows 34 percent of respondents would not seek genetic testing to predict their likelihood of developing a hereditary cancer – even if the cost of the testing was not an issue.

Concerns about employment and insurability were cited as the primary reason, even though current laws prohibit such discrimination.

New figures from the National Down Syndrome Cytogenetic Register (NDSCR) based at Queen Mary University of London, reveal the proportion of Down syndrome cases diagnosed antenatally has increased in younger women. Furthermore, Down syndrome diagnoses are occurring earlier in pregnancy for women of all ages.

The NDSCR is the only national source of data on pre and postnatal diagnoses of Down, Patau and Edwards syndrome cases in England and Wales. The latest figures are captured in the new NDSCR Annual Report 2012.

NEW YORK – February 5, 2014 – EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit organization that focuses on local conservation and global health issues, announced the results of research conducted on honey bee colony declines and the factors attributed to honey bee losses. In a paper published this week in the journal EcoHealth, scientists at EcoHealth Alliance investigated the causes of long-term declines of colony numbers and annual colony losses.

TEMPE, Ariz. – Humans living in densely populated urban areas have a profound impact not only on their physical environment, but also on the health and fitness of native wildlife. For the first time, scientists have found a direct link between the degree of urbanization and the prevalence and severity of two distinct parasites in wild house finches.

The findings are published in today's issue of the journal PLOS ONE.

The pre-Ice Age marine mammal community of the North Pacific formed a strangely eclectic scene, research by a Geology PhD student at New Zealand's University of Otago reveals.

Studying hundreds of fossil bones and teeth he excavated from the San Francisco Bay Area's Purisima Formation, Robert Boessenecker has put together a record of 21 marine mammal species including dwarf baleen whales, odd double-tusked walruses, porpoises with severe underbites and a dolphin closely related to the now-extinct Chinese river dolphin.

New findings in mice suggest that merely changing meal times could have a significant effect on the levels of triglycerides in the liver. The results of this Weizmann Institute of Science study, recently published in Cell Metabolism, not only have important implications for the potential treatment of metabolic diseases, they may also have broader implications for most research areas in the life sciences.

CLEVELAND, Ohio (February 5, 2014)—Injecting a little anesthetic near a nerve bundle in the neck cut troublesome hot flashes significantly, shows a new randomized, controlled trial published online today in Menopause, the journal of The North American Menopause Society (NAMS). The technique could give women who cannot or prefer not to take hormones or other medications an effective treatment alternative.

Women may perceive men with wider faces as more dominant and more attractive for short-term relationships, according to a new study in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

"Our study shows that within three minutes of meeting in real life, women find more dominant, wider-faced men attractive for short-term relationships, and want to go on another date with them," says psychological scientist and lead researcher Katherine Valentine of Singapore Management University.

Sponges are an important animal for marine and freshwater ecology and represent a rich animal diversity found throughout the world, from tropical climates to the arctic poles. For evolutionary biologists, they also present an interesting animal for comparative study because they are simple filter feeders, and lack nervous, digestive or circulatory systems, suggesting that they diverged early from other animals.

In the ocean, the killer whale rules as a top predator, feeding on everything from seals to sharks. Being at the apex of the food chain, killer whales' geographic distribution and population size can also serve as a sentinel species regarding past and future ocean ecosystems and environmental change.

Whole genome sequencing has revealed a global fall in the numbers of killer whales during the last Ice Age, at a time when ocean productivity may have been widely reduced, according to researchers at Durham University.

The scientists studied the DNA sequences of killer whale communities across the world.

They found a severe decline in whale numbers leading to a bottleneck and consequent loss of genetic diversity approximately 40,000 years ago when large parts of the Earth were covered in ice.