A recent paper found an increased risk for malignant melanoma in men who took sildenafil (Viagra) for erectile dysfunction.

Unlike some observational studies, this is not being exaggerated by attention-whoring researchers. They are cautious about what it means and doesn't mean. The media is making hay, of course, and they may be making it for good reason.

The prospective cohort study was based on participants in the Health Professionals’ Follow-up Study who were questioned regarding sildenafil use for erectile dysfunction in the year 2000. A total of 25,848 men were used after excluding those who reported cancers at baseline.

An analysis of temperature data since 1500 A.D. all but rules out the possibility that global warming in the industrial era is a natural fluctuation of climate, according to a paper in Climate Dynamics.

Want to reduce jet lag? A new app called Entrain claims it is the first to use a numbers-based approach  to "entrainment," the scientific term for synchronizing circadian rhythms with the outside hour. It's based on work by  Danny Forger, a professor of mathematics at the University of Michigan, and Kirill Serkh, a doctoral student at Yale University.   

Entrain is built around the premise that light, particularly from the sun and in wavelengths that appear to our eyes as the color blue, is the strongest signal to regulate circadian rhythms. These fluctuations in behaviors and bodily functions, tied to the planet's 24-hour day, do more than guide us to eat and sleep. They govern processes in each one of our cells.

In Tom Wolfe's "The Right Stuff" and in 1940s engineering, there was a demon in the air at 750 miles per hour, a line some said could not be crossed. It was called the Sound Barrier for that reason.

If that demon could cause a plane to break apart in air, imagine what it would do to a car on the ground. 

We'll find out in 2015. The BLOODHOUND SSC will make a test run at almost 800 MPH in 2015, which will beat the current official land speed record of 763 MPH, and will attempt 1,000 MPH in 2016. To keep her between the ditches, engineers will have to model how the car will cope with the supersonic rolling ground, rotating wheels and resulting shock waves in close proximity to the test surface at Hakskeen Pan, South Africa.  

It is barely possible to see the parasitic worm Amakusaplana acroporae when it sits on its favorite hosts, the staghorn coral Acropora, thanks to its excellent camouflage. However, new research from the University of Southampton has found that the small flatworm could cause significant damage to coral reefs. 

To a high degree, newspapers mirror the viewpoints of the political elite, a bolster to the 'elite-driven media' theory about editorial viewpoints, according to a new analysis in thejournal Media, War&Conflict.

The scholars from the University of Copenhagen elite-driven media theory may explain why support for the war efforts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya have been remarkably consistent in the small, non-belligerent nation of Denmark.

The rise and fall of acid rain is a global experiment whose results are preserved in the geologic record and in Greenland ice sheet samples, which discovered a link between air acidity and how nitrogen is preserved in layers of snow, University of Washington atmospheric scientists say the U.S. Clean Air Act worked.

Researchers from the UC San Diego School of Medicine and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute believe they have uncovered a new aspect of autism - that proteins involved in autism interact with many more partners than previously known.

These interactions had not been detected earlier because they involve alternatively spliced forms of autism genes found in the brain. 

In their study, the scientists isolated hundreds of new variants of autism genes from the human brain, and then screened their protein products against thousands of other proteins to identify interacting partners. Proteins produced by alternatively-spliced autism genes and their many partners formed a biological network that produced an unprecedented view of how autism genes are connected. 

A systematic review in the Journal of Nutrition has associated iron supplements with improved exercise performance of women in child-bearing years.

Lead researcher, Dr Sant-Rayn Pasricha from the University of Melbourne School of Population and Global Health and colleagues concluded that iron supplementation improved women’s exercise performance, in terms of both the highest level they could achieve at 100% exertion (maximal capacity) and their exercise efficiency at a submaximal exertion. Women who were given iron were able to perform a given exercise using a lower heart rate and at a higher efficiency.

The IRS and the Recording Industry Association of America share one thing in common; if they ever actually collected all of the estimated money they claim they are owed, they could buy a small country with it. With the RIAA, they always made piracy projections under the assumption that every illegal download imaginable was a lost sale and the IRS believes every business and resident exists to fund their coffers.