Passing on our genes to the next generation is the key process in evolution that happens through natural selection. So why do women suddenly stop having periods when they have at least a third of their lives left to live? It makes no sense, which is why it has been called a “Darwinian puzzle” – an aspect of biology that appears to be at odds with natural selection.

New research conducted by Plymouth University shows that young women with high emotional intelligence (EI) are more likely to use manipulative behaviours, resulting in a greater engagement in delinquency.

The research, led by Dr Alison Bacon, Lecturer in Psychology, was conducted to assess why young women with high levels of EI are more likely to engage in antisocial behaviour than young men - a conclusion drawn from her 2014 paper, 'Sex differences in the relationship between sensation seeking, trait emotional intelligence and delinquent behaviour'.

Public health measures to reduce smoking would have more success if policy makers intervened to curb the vast profitability of the tobacco industry, say University researchers.

The lucrative nature of the cigarette market, dominated by a small number of large shareholder-owned companies, results in a vigorous fight against any new public health measures that may disrupt their profit-making.

The researchers from the University of Bath and University of Ottawa say governments should look to the success of past policies that have transitioned other industries towards products that are less harmful to health, such as the switch from leaded to unleaded petrol.

LIFE ON EARTH - Reconstructing the emergence and evolution of life on our planet is tightly linked to the questions as to when and to what extent Earth's atmosphere became oxygenated. New geological studies based on data from Western Greenland indicate that small levels of atmospheric oxygen developed already 3.8 billion years ago, some 0.7-0.8 billion years earlier than previously thought.

People diagnosed with depression are about twice as likely to smoke as the general population. A survey of 6811 participants from Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the USA, published today in the scientific journal Addiction, found that although depressed smokers tried to quit smoking more often than other smokers, they were more likely to return to smoking within a month. This tendency seemed to be stronger for women than men.

Washington, DC - February 17, 2016 - Researchers from Maryland and New York have identified a novel herpes virus in cells taken from a bat. The work, published this week in mSphere, the American Society for Microbiology's new open access journal, could lead to better understanding of the biology of these viruses and why bats serve as hosts for a number of viruses that can potentially transfer to humans.

Eight new whip spider species have been found in the Brazilian Amazon, almost doubling the number of known charinid whip spider species in Brazil, according to a study published Feb. 17, 2016 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Alessandro Ponce de Leão Giupponi and Gustavo Silva de Miranda from Fundação Oswaldo Cruz, Brazil and the Center of Macroecology, Evolution and Climate at the University of Copenhagen (Denmark), respectively.

An analysis of scientific reports and comments on the health effects of a salty diet reveals a polarization between those supportive of the once-popular belief that population-wide reduction of salt intake is associated with better health and those that content it has been more hype than science. They used a citation analysis method of reviews, a little different from a traditional method, which basically just averages out other studies and attempts to control for differences.

In all, 54 percent were supportive of the hypothesis; 33 percent, not supportive; and 13 percent inconclusive, finds the article in the International Journal of Epidemiology.

The longest time anyone has spent in space is just over fourteen months. So far, astronauts have recovered surprisingly quickly, even after the longest duration spaceflights. Within a few weeks they are almost back to normal health. There are some longer term effects, on load bearing bones, which may take a couple of years to clear up, and very rarely, permanent effects on the eyes.

But what about longer periods in space than that? Their condition continually deteriorates for as long as they are in space and so far nobody has spent as long as two years in space; the record is fourteen months. So the question is still wide open for longer duration flights.

First let's look at what we know already.

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., February 16, 2015--A paper in the latest issue of the journal Nature suggests a common ancestor of apes and humans, Chororapithecus abyssinicus, evolved in Africa, not Eurasia, two million years earlier than previously thought.

"Our new research supports early divergence: 10 million years ago for the human-gorilla split and 8 million years ago for our split from chimpanzees," said Los Alamos National Laboratory geologist and senior team member Giday WoldeGabriel. "That's at least 2 million years earlier than previous estimates, which were based on genetic science that lacked fossil evidence."