Researchers have detected microplastic pollution - a concern in oceans because small bits of plastic can be harmful to fish and birds that feed on plankton or other small waterborne organisms
 - in one of Western Europe's largest lakes, Lake Geneva, in large enough quantities to raise concern.  

If you are a patient in the United Kingdom's National Health Service (NHS), try to have surgery on a Monday instead of a Friday, says a paper in the British Medical Journal.

The authors analyzed over four million elective procedures conducted in NHS hospitals in England between 2008 and 2011. They found that 27,582 patients died within 30 days of surgery and the mortality rate was lowest for patients having operations on Monday. Mortality increased for each subsequent day of the week. The odds of death were 44 per cent higher for operations on a Friday than a Monday.

Many seeds germinate in the soil and get their nutrition in the dark from limited reserves of starch and lipids, so as soon as possible they  grow toward light. Light-sensing proteins find the shortest route to sunlight – and then plants are even able to bend in the direction of the light source. 

Which gender is more generous? Given the social, subjective nature of the question and the influx of armchair philosophy into culture, everyone claims to have the right answer. What about an experiment?

A group of economists have found that, given the chance, women are more likely than men to avoid an opportunity to donate to charity.

The field experiment conducted by scholars at the University of Chicago and University of California, Berkeley tested people's motivations to give, whether they responded to social pressure or from an attitude of altruism, and concluded that when it's easy to avoid making a donation without being confrontational, such as not responding to a door-to-door solicitor, women are less likely than men to give.

Stromatolites, "layered rocks", are structures made of calcium carbonate and shaped by the actions of photosynthetic cyanobacteria and other microbes that trapped and bound grains of coastal sediment into fine layers. They showed up in great abundance along shorelines all over the world about 3.5 billion years ago and remain the earliest visible manifestation of life on Earth.

Reductions in Arctic sea ice levels may nfluence patterns of atmospheric circulation both within and beyond the Arctic, according to a simulation using  2007 ice conditions, the second lowest Arctic sea ice extent in the satellite era. 

Two 30-year simulations, one using the sea ice levels of 2007 and another using sea ice levels at the end of the 20th century, were used to access the impact of ice free seas. The results showed a significant response to the anomalous open water of 2007.

People generally like the idea of wind energy, they just don't want generation facilities anywhere near their homes. Or, in the case of offshore wind power, their yachts.

But remote, cold places may be a better fit and a new forecast says that government mandates and subsidies in the range of approximately EUR 75 billion could lead to between 45 and 50 gigawatts of wind energy in cold climates by 2017.

Hospitalization due to surgery or critical illness can lead to cognitive dysfunction -   inattention, disorganized thinking, altered consciousness and prolonged disruptions in learning and memory functions - in some patients, especially the elderly.

The mechanisms whereby surgery and/or anesthesia may lead to cognitive impairment remain unclear but research has demonstrated that inflammation and release of pro-inflammatory molecules, like cytokines, play an important role in causing brain inflammation and cognitive decline after surgery.