Dark matter is an umbrella term for matter that no one has directly detected but must be out there or physics at the very large scale makes even less sense than it makes now. Since it does not reflect, absorb or emit light, it is invisible, so whatever it 'is' is only known to exist via its gravitational effects on matter as we know it.

At least 30 dogs in England have been killed in less than 18 months by an unknown disease which causes skin lesions and kidney failure, reveals research published in Veterinary Record. The disease is believed to be Alabama rot (cutaneous and renal glomerular vasculopathy), a condition which has been seen in the USA in greyhounds for almost 30 years.

While there have been occasional reports of the disease in individual dogs outside of the USA, this is the first report of a series of cases occurring in England. None of the 30 dogs in this English series of cases were greyhounds and evidence of the disease was found in 15 different breeds of dog.

Milk is a key element for household food security and provides a stable income to farmers including women, who are usually in charge of taking care of the milk-producing animals in the low-income countries. Currently pathogen growth in milk is managed with refrigeration or with chemicals.

Although bacterial growth in milk is managed with refrigeration in the high-income countries, a high cost of infrastructure and a demand for a permanent electricity supply prevent milk refrigeration in the rural areas in the low-income countries.

Moreover, certain pathogens, for example Listeria monocytogenes, are less sensitive to low temperature; therefore, they can proliferate at refrigeration during transportation and storage.

The Mediterranean diet became a health fad when epidemiologists looked at a region in Europe and determined that their lower heart disease was due to more fish.

A new paper uses a debunked claim "it takes a gallon of gas to make a pound of beef" and uses that to declare that a new diet would reduce global warming. The authors from the University Hospital Complex of Huelva, Jaume I University of Castellón and the University of Huelva compared the daily menus in Spain, based on a roughly Mediterranean diet, to those eaten in English-speaking countries, such as the United Kingdom and the US.

Rhodiola rosea (R. rosea), or roseroot, may be a beneficial treatment option for major depressive disorder, according to a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, comparison trial of oral R. rosea extract versus conventional antidepressant for mild to moderate major depressive disorder.

Animal development has an intriguing puzzle - scaling, the proportionality of different body parts. Whether you have an elephant or a mouse, organ and tissue sizes are generally proportional to the overall size of the body.

Clearly evolution determined 'just right' but how? Some new clues from fruit flies show the size and patterning accuracy of an embryo depend on the amount of reproductive resources mothers invest in the process before an egg leaves the ovary.