London, UK, Saturday 12 April 2014: A UK study[i] investigating the link between low vitamin D status and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) in British children has identified a genetic variant associated with the disease's severity.

The research, conducted by the King's College Hospital Paediatric Liver Centre and the University of Surrey's School of Biosciences and Medicine, and funded by the Children's Liver Disease Foundation retrospectively analysed the medical records of 120 paediatric patients with NAFLD.

It's no secret that bacterial parasites can change creatures. The parasitic lancet liver fluke infects the brain of ants, compelling them to climb to the tip of a blade of grass and into the mouth of a grazing animal. Another parasite is thought to change the behavior of rats to make them more susceptible to predation. 

They basically become zombies. And some bacterial parasites can even turn plants into the living dead.

Scientists who monitored skuas in Adélie Land and the Kerguelen Islands for ten years have found when these seabirds exhibit high mercury levels in their blood, their breeding success decreases. 

The researchers from the Centre d'Etudes Biologiques de Chizé and from the Littoral, Environnement et Sociétés Laboratory (CNRS / Université de La Rochelle) say that this is the first time that toxicological measurements have been combined with a population study carried out over such a long period in the Antarctic and Subantarctic. 

Before 1940, Nobel Prizes were a reflection of the rapidly evolving state of science. It was uncommon for an award to happen for a discovery 20 years or more after the research happened, it seemed more like a concession prize because nothing had happened recently - in physics, chemistry and medicine, delayed awards only occurred 11%, 15% and 24% of the time.

By 1985, those percentages were 60%, 52% and 45%. This is only a problem that has cropped up in science and medicine, other prizes are quickly awarded on pop culture status; President Obama was apparently given one, based on when nominations happen, for his first inauguration speech.

An analysis of temperature data since 1500 A.D. all but rules out the possibility that global warming in the industrial era is a natural fluctuation of climate, according to a paper in Climate Dynamics.

Want to reduce jet lag? A new app called Entrain claims it is the first to use a numbers-based approach  to "entrainment," the scientific term for synchronizing circadian rhythms with the outside hour. It's based on work by  Danny Forger, a professor of mathematics at the University of Michigan, and Kirill Serkh, a doctoral student at Yale University.   

Entrain is built around the premise that light, particularly from the sun and in wavelengths that appear to our eyes as the color blue, is the strongest signal to regulate circadian rhythms. These fluctuations in behaviors and bodily functions, tied to the planet's 24-hour day, do more than guide us to eat and sleep. They govern processes in each one of our cells.