Researchers have discovered a new fossil organism from the Ediacara Biota, a group of organisms that occurred in the Ediacaran period of geologic time.

Named Plexus ricei and resembling a curving tube, the organism resided on the Ediacaran seafloor. Plexus ricei individuals ranged in size from 5 to 80 centimeters long and 5 to 20 millimeters wide.

Along with the rest of the Ediacara Biota, it evolved around 575 million years ago and disappeared from the fossil record around 540 million years ago, just around the time the Cambrian Explosion of evolutionary history was getting under way.

People who have a variant of a longevity gene called KLOTHO also have improved brain skills such as thinking, learning and memory regardless of their age, sex, or whether they have a genetic risk factor for Alzheimer's disease.

Correlation but not causation, to be sure, except increasing KLOTHO gene levels in mice made them smarter.

In Japanese men, shorter height and longer life seem to be linked, according to an analysis of data in the Kuakini Honolulu Heart Program (HHP) and the Kuakini Honolulu-Asia Aging Study (HAAS).

Calcium supplements are widely taken by women for bone health and some studies have suggested that calcium supplements bring with them an increased risk of cardiovascular disease.

A new study
examined supplemental calcium use and incident cardiovascular disease in a prospective cohort study of 74,245 women in the Nurses' Health Study. The women did not have cardiovascular disease or cancer at the start of the study. They were followed for 24 years to document risk of developing heart attack and stroke.

Can hurricanes cause stillbirths to rise sharply or is it epidemiologists torturing data until it confesses again? 

A paper in the Journal of Epidemiology&Community Health says that Hurricanes Katrina and Rita are responsible for up to half of all recorded stillbirths in the worst hit areas and the  true fetal death toll may even be higher because of the displacement of people whose homes were destroyed. Well, they use the weaseling "may have been" that has become famous in advocacy claims for meaning 'we are claiming causation but we can't prove it so we will hint at it'.

From the age of 30 onwards, physical inactivity exerts a greater impact on a woman's lifetime risk of developing heart disease than the other well-known risk factors, suggests research published online in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

This includes overweight, the finding show, prompting the researchers to suggest that greater effort needs to be made to promote exercise.

The researchers wanted to quantify the changing contribution made to a woman's likelihood of developing heart disease across her lifetime for each of the known top four risk factors in Australia: excess weight (high BMI); smoking; high blood pressure; and physical inactivity.