Last week, in Part I of this two part series, "Bee Deaths Mystery Solved?

By Isabelle Szmigin, University of Birmingham

As well as the tell-tale signs of decorations going up, the rolling out of Christmas advertisements has become a key moment for getting us all in the seasonal mood. And the competition to capture the festive spirit – and the customers that come with it – is fierce.

By Mark Burdon, The University of Queensland and Paul Harpur, The University of Queensland

Staff recruitment and retention are an ongoing challenge for employers. Proponents of big data in the workplace are now claiming they can change that.

The retina is the neural tissue in the back of the eye that initiates vision. It is responsible for receiving light signals and converting them into neurologic signals, which are then transmitted via the optic nerve to the brain so that we can see.

Mutations that disrupt vision by damaging the retina and optic nerve have been identified in more than 200 genes. This genetic diversity made genetic diagnostic testing difficult until the recent development of high throughput genomic techniques.

Sometimes you don't need to travel to the unexplored corners of the globe to discover a new species of plant. Sometimes they can be really close to home, you just have to spend 40 years of your life looking.

University of South Carolina
Professor John Nelson and alumnus Douglas Rayner have founds just such a new species close to home and they have dubbed it Stachys caroliniana, a new example of what is commonly called a hedge-nettle or woundwort.

And rarity is unusual among S. caroliniana's closest relatives. There are about 300 species in the genus Stachys, according to Nelson, the curator of the University of South Carolina's A.C. Moore Herbarium. He calls it a "cosmopolitan genus."

It's pretty common in culture, from Turkey to Tennessee, for a public that otherwise does not condone rape to joke about it when it comes to male criminals. And the more heinous the crime, not only does it become acceptable, but almost demanded in a justice system that often favors criminals over victims.

But raping women isn't acceptable in civilized countries. In the modern decade, 'gender' has become a subjective thing. Anthropology papers will even strangely let 'other', including alien life forms, be considered a valid gender in their surveys.

Scientists have identified four new genes associated with a severe food allergy called eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE), which has only recently been recognized as a distinct condition. Its hallmark is inflammation and painful swelling in the esophagus, along with high levels of immune cells called eosinophils. It can affect people of any age, but is more common among young men who have a history of other allergic diseases such as asthma and eczema. 

Archaea are a family of single-celled organisms that can thrive in environments like boiling hydrothermal pools and smoking deep sea vents deep underground, which are too extreme for most other species to survive.

It's a story as old as medicine. When it comes to treatments, people don't always obey the written word. When it comes to antibiotics, for example, people may stop taking them when they feel better so they can save them for another incident. 

Prescription medication guidelines are written specifically, to help people get the effect. So why do only 50 patient of patients take prescription medication as they should, 160 years after medicine became a proper field?