Duchenne muscular dystrophy is a relatively rare congenital disease which causes muscle degeneration and eventual death in teenagers.  

Around 1 in 3500 newborns is affected and by approximately 10 years of age, Duchenne patients are dependent on a wheelchair and in increasing need for care. They are not expected to make it to their late 20s and often die from heart or respiratory failure.

There is no current cure for Duchenne muscular dystrophy  but recently researchers from Bern, France, England and Sweden tested a promising active substance successfully.

Teenagers who own smart phones spend more time online – including during the night, which may affect their sleep. A new University of Basel study on more than 300 students reports that teenagers' digital media use during the night is associated with an increased risk of sleep problems and depressive symptoms. 

Though they only became ubiquitous around 2007, most teenagers nowadays own smart phones. Due to wireless Internet connections and cheap data rates, teenagers with smart phones spend more time online and communicate with their peers for less money – for example via WhatsApp – which has changed their digital media use pattern profoundly. 

There are ways non-scientists can assess if the research underlying big claims about cancer cures stack up. Rafael Anderson Gonzales Mendoza/Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA

By Nial Wheate, University of Sydney

Women – and little girls even more so – are desperate to see images and stories that don’t actively oppress them onscreen, says Olivia Murphy. Image: Nadia Mel, CC BY-SA

By Olivia Murphy, University of Sydney

The warm ocean temperatures that brought an endangered green sea turtle to San Francisco in September have triggered a population explosion of bright pink, inch-long sea slugs in tide pools along California's central and northern coastline. The Hopkins' Rose nudibranch, while no strange sight in Southern California, is rarely spotted farther north. A team of scientists, including experts from the California Academy of Sciences, believes this far-flung Okenia rosacea bloom--along with a slew of other marine species spotted north of their typical ranges--may signal a much larger shift in ocean climate and a strong forthcoming El Niño.

Understanding how baleen whales hear has posed a great mystery to marine mammal researchers. New research by San Diego State University biologist Ted W. Cranford and University of California, San Diego engineer Petr Krysl reveals that the skulls of at least some baleen whales, specifically fin whales in their study, have acoustic properties that capture the energy of low frequencies and direct it to their ear bones.

Baleen whales, also known as mysticetes, are the largest animals on earth, and include blue whales, minke whales, right whales, gray whales and fin whales. These whales can emit extremely low frequency vocalizations that travel extraordinary distances underwater. The wavelengths of these calls can be longer than the bodies of the whales themselves.

The third chapter in the ongoing saga of the "first direct image of gravitational waves through the primordial sky" has been written. The first chapter was in March of last year when the BICEP2 team announced that it had observed the portion of cosmic background radiation (the "fossil radiation" from the Big Bang) generated by gravitational waves. This would have been the first observation of the cosmological effects of the elusive phenomenon predicted by Einstein's theory of General Relativity. 

A new study indicates that sexual behavior among female university students in Sweden has changed during the last 25 years, with behavior now appearing more risky than before.

The surveys were taken as part of contraceptive counseling delivered at a Student Health Center in Sweden. 

Bowhunting has made a big comeback in the 21st century. Suddenly women love it - and their inclination to shoot something up close and personal without getting their hands messy is reason enough not to provoke American women.

But it won't be for food, and perhaps it stopped being for food thousands of years ago. 

We may think of bowhunting in neolithic times as being functional - to find food - but it may have instead been social cohesion, according to archaeologists who have analyzed the Neolithic bows found in the site of La Draga (Girona, Spain). 


Most in-the-know Americans assumed The
Hunger Games was ripping off Battle Royale. It