Gayle Newland, 25, has been convicted of three counts of sexual assault against a woman who had believed she was in a sexual relationship with a man. Newland’s case has thrown up some very thorny questions about gender and sexual consent – and about what, exactly, we are required by law to reveal to our sexual partners.

Astronomers have successfully peered through the 'amniotic sac' of a star that is still forming to observe the innermost region of a burgeoning solar system for the first time.

In a research paper published today in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, an international team of astronomers describe surprising findings in their observations of the parent star, which is called HD 100546.

Lead author Dr Ignacio Mendigutía, from the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Leeds, said: "Nobody has ever been able to probe this close to a star that is still forming and which also has at least one planet so close in.

In Australian homes, reliable hot water supplies for taking showers or bathing the kids are taken for granted. But this has a significant cost – conventional hot water heaters can account for up to 30% of household energy use and can be significant carbon emitters.

One alternative is solar hot water, which can supply more than 90% of household hot water and reduce energy bills by 50-85%, as well as lowering carbon emissions.

There are countless parenting questions that science can’t answer: “is it gross to eat food my child spat out?”, “why do my kids hate wearing pants?” and, of course, “when they grow up, will my kids remember how much I loved them, or just that I made them wear pants?”.

Fortunately, there are some important parenting issues science can address. Here are five simple tips for raising healthy children based on scientific studies from the last 12 months,.

1. Dads can – and should – help with breastfeeding

If you have to go without gluten but want to maintain the texture of popular foods that contain this sticky protein, you are forced to use substitutes containing extra sugar, extra fat, hydroxypropyl methyl cellulose and xanthan gum, none of which are all that great from an overall health perspective. Given that, opting for a gluten-free diet makes little sense unless it's necessary.

Genetic mutations called "escape variants" in the deadly Ebola virus appear to block the ability of antibody-based treatments to ward off infection, according to a team of U.S. Army scientists and collaborators.

Here at the American Council on Science and Health, we meticulously avoid politics because science, in its purest form, is a quest for the truth while the essence of politics is lying well, preferably without getting caught. And, even if you do get caught, it probably doesn’t matter, since lying is part of the job description.

Hence, our mission is, by definition, incompatible with political discussion or debate.

This, however, does not mean that if a public figure, elected or not, is using his or her soapbox to spread bad science or medicine, that we won’t go after them. And we do so emphatically, since the bigger the audience that an individual commands, the more harm they can do.

Do monarch butterflies need mandatory labeling? New research proves that the favorite butterfly of anti-science activists is actually a GMO.

Irony or paradox? Maybe both.

In one of the more memorable original Star Trek episodes, Captain Kirk uses a paradox to thwart an android’s attempt to capture the Enterprise. (1) Kirk tells Norman, the malicious robot, that everything Harry says is a lie. Harry then says, “Norman, I am lying.” Norman is unable to process the contradictory statements, causing his circuits to disintegrate:

Patrick Nunn, a professor of geography at University of the Sunshine Coast, and collaborator Nick Reid, a University of New England linguist, believe aborigines in Australia have records of Australia's coastline going back 7,000 years - obviously unheard of in any other culture.

Their evidence they must be accurate? The stories are all consistent with one another.

Psychologists know that you can't send a sentence around a room and have it be accurate so the team contends that because the stories are similar, they must be true. “It’s important to note that it’s not just one story that describes this process. There are many stories, all consistent in their narrative, across 21 diverse sites around Australia’s coastline,” says Nunn.

A new paper finds that adolescents have become less likely to approve of and use marijuana over the last decade when compared to young adults. This is coming during a time where a majority of Americans support the full legalization of marijuana, according to a 2013 Gallup poll.  

Using survey data collected from the nationally representative National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) conducted between 2002 through 2013, the researchers broke the sample into three subgroups based upon age: younger adolescents (aged 12–14), older adolescents (aged 15–17), and young adults (aged 18–25). In breaking the sample into subgroups, distinct trends emerged within each category.