Some cultural activists like Hollywood director Rob Reiner believe smoking is so influential it should be the target of modern-day McCarthyism and banned from films and television. What about sexualized lyrics in popular music?  Do those have an impact on the sexual behavior and attitudes of adolescents?

Researchers Cougar Hall, Joshua H. West, and Shane Hill from Brigham Young University examined the trend of increasing use of sexually explicit lyrics in music - though if they think the trend is recent, they must be fairly young; music from the 1970s was stuffed with overt references to sex.

Clouds amplify climate change, says Texas A&M University atmospheric sciences professor Andrew Dessler, rebutting recent claims by some that clouds are a root cause of climate change (for an analysis of the study that led to the concern, go here).

Dessler says decades of data support the mainstream and long-held view that clouds are primarily acting as a so-called feedback that amplifies warming from human activity.

Postpartum pain management using the opioid codeine has been common and, until recently, it was considered safe to breastfeed - the death of an infant exposed to codeine through breast milk led health care providers to question the safety of the drug when used by breastfeeding mothers.

Instead, some doctors have began prescribing oxycodone as an alternative to codeine but an upcoming study in The Journal of Pediatrics finds that oxycodone is no safer for breastfed infants than codeine.

Around 27 million Americans have arthritis, three million of which began with a joint injury that provokes slow and steady cartilage deterioration.

A new study from MIT suggests that glucocorticoid dexamethasone, a steroid drug currently used to treat inflammatory diseases, could also prevent osteoarthritis from ever developing in those people if given soon after the injury.

Feel lazy?  Maybe you can blame your genes.

Specially-bred mice which had two genes removed, which control the protein AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK), an enzyme that is switched on when you exercise, didn't want to run a ny more.

"Mice love to run," said Gregory Steinberg, associate professor of medicine in the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine at McMaster University.  "While the normal mice could run for miles, those without the genes in their muscle could only run the same distance as down the hall and back. It was remarkable. The mice looked identical to their brothers or sisters but within seconds we knew which ones had the genes and which one didn't." 

People communicate in bursts. In communication, our behavior does not happen in a homogenous way over time, but rather there is universal behavior in which there is no communication, followed by short intervals, says a new study.

A new study analyzed around 9,000 million calls throughout a nearly one year period and identified  features of the communication process and attempted to quantify their impact in the diffusion of information.