People who have a variant of a longevity gene called KLOTHO also have improved brain skills such as thinking, learning and memory regardless of their age, sex, or whether they have a genetic risk factor for Alzheimer's disease.

Correlation but not causation, to be sure, except increasing KLOTHO gene levels in mice made them smarter.

In Japanese men, shorter height and longer life seem to be linked, according to an analysis of data in the Kuakini Honolulu Heart Program (HHP) and the Kuakini Honolulu-Asia Aging Study (HAAS).

Calcium supplements are widely taken by women for bone health and some studies have suggested that calcium supplements bring with them an increased risk of cardiovascular disease.

A new study
examined supplemental calcium use and incident cardiovascular disease in a prospective cohort study of 74,245 women in the Nurses' Health Study. The women did not have cardiovascular disease or cancer at the start of the study. They were followed for 24 years to document risk of developing heart attack and stroke.

Can hurricanes cause stillbirths to rise sharply or is it epidemiologists torturing data until it confesses again? 

A paper in the Journal of Epidemiology&Community Health says that Hurricanes Katrina and Rita are responsible for up to half of all recorded stillbirths in the worst hit areas and the  true fetal death toll may even be higher because of the displacement of people whose homes were destroyed. Well, they use the weaseling "may have been" that has become famous in advocacy claims for meaning 'we are claiming causation but we can't prove it so we will hint at it'.

From the age of 30 onwards, physical inactivity exerts a greater impact on a woman's lifetime risk of developing heart disease than the other well-known risk factors, suggests research published online in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

This includes overweight, the finding show, prompting the researchers to suggest that greater effort needs to be made to promote exercise.

The researchers wanted to quantify the changing contribution made to a woman's likelihood of developing heart disease across her lifetime for each of the known top four risk factors in Australia: excess weight (high BMI); smoking; high blood pressure; and physical inactivity.

Despite its name, the Dead Sea does support life, and not just in the sense of helping visitors float in its waters. Algae, bacteria, and fungi make up the limited number of species that can tolerate the extremely salty environment at the lowest point on Earth.

During implementation of the Affordable Care Act, states were pressured into increasing Medicaid coverage to higher incomes. Many did not want to do it, not because they were against health care but did not want a flawed program consuming even more of state budgets.

The federal government gives states a 100 percent subsidy - but only temporarily. Due to unwillingness by the government to negotiate a fix for Medicaid, 24 states have decided not to be burdened with the higher costs and worry that Medicaid, designed for the poorest and sickest, will be forcing those patients to compete with healthy 25-year-olds for appointments. Estimates were that up to 60 percent of new Medicaid patients would be people who drop private health insurance.

One of the most fascinating nearby planetary systems, 55 Cancri, is now less mysterious.

Hopefully. The authors say theirs is the first viable model for  the planetary system of 55 Cancri, one the first stars discovered to have planets.

Numerous studies since 2002 had failed to determine a plausible model for the masses and orbits of two giant planets located closer to 55 Cancri than Mercury is to our Sun. Astronomers had struggled to understand how these massive planets orbiting so close to their star could avoid a catastrophe such as one planet being flung into the star, or the two planets colliding with each other.

A spider in the Moroccan Sahara rolls like a tumbleweed and can do powerful, acrobatic flips through the air.

Cebrennus rechenbergi runs for a short time, then stretches out its front legs, spinning into the air and returning to touch the ground with its hind legs.  The move doubles the spider’s speed, to two meters per second. But since it uses so much energy, the maneuver is a last resort, called on only to escape predators. 

“I can’t see any other reason,”  said Peter Jäger, a taxonomist at the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum in Frankfurt, Germany, who identified the spider. “It is a costly move. If it performs this five to 10 times within one day, then it dies.”

Vermont is still milking the slavery thing.

Yes, yes, you were first to ban it. It's easy to ban something you never had in the first place. That does not mean you are right in everything you ban and, let's face it, comparing GMOs to slavery is a little weird, even for Vermont.

Nonetheless, “We’re first again,” gushes organic farmer Will Allen in The Economist, which makes the rest of the country wonder if it is the organic farming or the Vermont air that makes people goofy.