Communist dictatorships don't get credit for much but one thing about them made anti-smoking advocates happy; a lack of cigarettes meant fewer people puffed. Yes, according to a new study in an anti-smoking journal, capitalism is to blame.

Contrary to health wisdom in the west, the number of Russian women who smoke has more than doubled since the collapse of the Soviet Union, say authors of a study published in the journal Tobacco Control.

In 1992, seven per cent of women smoked, compared to almost 15 per cent by 2003. In the same period, the number of men who smoke has risen from 57 per cent to 63 per cent.

Since the term "black hole" was coined by John Wheeler in 1967, they have been used to resolve a lot of science-fiction plot inconsistencies.

Sometimes they resolve real-life ones too, especially if there is no other explanation.

HE 0437-5439, is an early-type star and one of ten so-called hypervelocity stars that are speeding away from the Milky Way galaxy - because of its young age, astronomers stated it could not have come from our galaxy. Carnegie astronomers Alceste Bonanos and Mercedes López-Morales, and collaborators Ian Hunter and Robert Ryans from Queen’s University Belfast examined its velocity, light intensity and, for the first time, its elemental composition and have proposed an answer - another black hole.

Think it's laws or governments that keep people honest? Not according to a new study in Psychological Science. Two psychologists examined the psychological impact of genetic determinism, free will, and ethical behavior and found that people who felt like they were in control of their destiny acted more ethically than people who felt like they were not.

It is well established that changing people’s sense of responsibility can change their behavior. But what would happen if people came to believe that their behavior was the inevitable product of a causal chain beyond their control – a predetermined fate beyond the reach of free will?

According to two studies published in Cell Transplantation, stroke victims may benefit from human mesenchymal stem cell (hMSC) or bone marrow stromal cell (BMSCs) transplantation. In both studies, the migration of chemically “tagged” transplanted stem cells were tracked to determine the degree to which the transplanted cells reached damaged areas of the brain and became therapeutically active.

“Both studies lend important support to a growing body of laboratory evidence that bone marrow is a remarkable adult stem cell source for transplant therapy following stroke,” says Cell Transplantation associate editor Cesar V. Borlongan, Ph.D. of the Medical College of Georgia. “The non-invasive MRI visualization of pre-labeled BMSCs could become a routine clinical marker for transplanted cells as well as for safety and efficacy.”

Daily consumption of caffeine in coffee, tea or soft drinks increases blood sugar levels for people with type 2 diabetes and may undermine efforts to control their disease, say scientists at Duke University Medical Center.

Researchers used new technology that measured participants’ glucose (sugar) levels on a constant basis throughout the day. Dr. James Lane, a psychologist at Duke and the lead author of the study, says it represents the first time researchers have been able to track the impact of caffeine consumption as patients go about their normal, everyday lives.

About nine percent of teenagers may have metabolic syndrome, a clustering of risk factors that put them on the path toward heart disease and diabetes in adulthood. This shocking statistic represents some of the first concentrated efforts to define and measure metabolic syndrome in children and adolescents – a necessary starting point for combating the problem, but one that has proven even trickier in youth than it has been in adults.

With the number of obese children in the United States rising at an alarming rate, pediatricians, family practitioners and researchers are concerned about what it means to for children’s future health.