Newly forming stars feed on huge amounts of gas and dust from dense envelopes surrounding them at birth and a team of astronomers reported observing an unusual "baby" star that periodically emits infrared light bursts, suggesting it may be a binary star. 

The young object is called LRLL 54361, is about 100,000 years old and located about 950 light years away toward the Perseus constellation. Years of monitoring its infrared with the Spitzer instrument reveal that it becomes 10 times brighter every 25.34 days. This periodicity suggests that a companion to the central forming star is likely inhibiting the infall of gas and dust until its closest orbital approach, when matter eventually comes crashing down onto the protostellar "twins." 

Comet explosions did not end the prehistoric human culture, known as Clovis, in North America 13,000 years ago, according to a new paper.

Researchers from Sandia National Laboratories, Royal Holloway and 13 other universities across the United States and Europe have found evidence which rebuts the belief that a large impact or airburst caused a significant and abrupt change to the Earth's climate and terminated the Clovis culture. They argue that other explanations must be found for the apparent disappearance.

Clovis is the name archaeologists have given to the earliest well-established human culture in the North American continent. It is named after the town in New Mexico, where distinct stone tools were found in the 1920s and 1930s.

With greater wealth comes lesser need to worry about costs like diapers, it seems. Or Western parents don't know how to whistle.

In the western world, babies now need diapers until an average of three years of age, nearly twice as long as 40 years ago. The situation in Vietnam is just the opposite. A study by scholars at Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, followed 47 infants and their mothers in Vietnam, where potty training starts at birth and the need for diapers is usually eliminated by nine months of age. 

The secret? Learning to be sensitive to when the baby needs to urinate.

The British Department of Health's marketing campaign to school girls and their parents for the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination program has so far proven to be one of the most successful in the world - except in London. 

 A Healthcare Protection Agency report shows an average uptake rate for three HPV doses in Year 8 schoolgirls aged 12-13 years across London of 76%, compared with the national (England) average of 84%. While many London boroughs achieve high uptake rates, those in Barnet, Kingston, City&Hackney, Camden, and Kensington&Chelsea fall 20-30% below the national average for uptake of all three HPV vaccine doses amongst 12 to 13 year old girls in the 2010/2011 school year. 

Pharmaceuticals are in decline as an industry due to over-regulation, lawsuits and cultural distrust. A new initiative from the European Medicines Agency, to commit to releasing all of the information from clinical trials once the marketing authorization process has ended, is being cheered by proponents of access to data but the pharmaceutical industry is less pleased. 

Writing in an editorial, PLoS Medicine writes, "As 2013 begins, it is clear that critical times lie ahead for the publishing of clinical trials, which may define the relationship between pharmaceutical companies and the public for many years to come.

Ridges spidering through impact craters on Mars appear to be the fossilized remnants of underground cracks through which water once flowed, according to a new analysis in Geophysical Research Letters.

The finding lends credence to the idea that the subsurface environment on Mars once had an active hydrology. Since this is about another planet, it is also required in 2013 that all science articles imply the discovery could have important ramifications for finding life on other planets.