Imagine, for a moment, you are a parent trying to limit how much dessert your sugar-craving young children can eat.

"You can have cake or ice cream," you say, confident a clear parental guideline has been laid out.

But your children seem to ignore this firm ruling, and insist on having both cake and ice cream. Are they merely rebelling against a parental command? Perhaps. But they might be confusing "or" with "and," as children do at times, something studies have shown since the 1970s. What seems like a restriction to the parent sounds like an invitation to the child: Have both!

Numerous confounding factors reduce the likelihood of replicating psychological studies, which are rarely replicated anyway. For example, the race of participants in an experiment or the geography of where the experiment was run can reduce the likelihood of getting the same result, and if it's a survey of college students, forget about it.

It's known that many patients die after getting sepsis but it's unclear if the increased risk of death (30 days to 2 years after sepsis) is because of sepsis itself or because of pre-existing health conditions the patient had before acquiring the complication. Patients with more medical problems are more likely to develop sepsis.

Sepsis is a complication of infection. The body releases chemicals in the bloodstream to help fight off infection, but sometimes those chemicals can damage the body, leading to organ failure and a dramatic drop in blood pressure. Sepsis is treated with antibiotics and fluids.

As our technology downsizes, scientists often operate in microscopic-scale jungles, where modern-day explorers develop new methods for transporting microscopic objects of different sizes across non uniform environments, without losing them. Now, Pietro Tierno and Arthur Straube from the University of Barcelona, Spain, have developed a new method for selectively controlling, via a change in magnetic field, the aggregation or disaggregation of magnetically interacting particles of two distinct sizes in suspension in a liquid. Previous studies only focused on one particle size. These results, just published in EPJ E, show that it is possible to build long chains of large particles suspended in a liquid, forming channels that drive the small particles to move along.

Boston, MA -- Women with elevated levels of common types of flame retardant chemicals in their blood may be at a higher risk for thyroid disease--and the risk may be significantly higher among post-menopausal women, according to a new study from researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

The new paper is the first to suggest a link between polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) and increased risk of thyroid problems in post-menopausal women in a nationally representative sample of women in the U.S. Thyroid problems include hyperthyroidism, hypothyroidism, goiter, or Hashimoto's disease.

The study was published online May 23, 2016 in the journal Environmental Health.

Tuna fishers who network with their competition may be able to stop thousands of sharks a year from being accidentally captured and killed in the Pacific Ocean.

Researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University and the University of Hawaii found if fishers communicated more with their rivals, it could lead to more sustainable fishing practices.

"Forty-six thousand sharks could have been saved if information about avoiding sharks was shared freely between fishing groups," says lead author Michele Barnes.

MADISON, Wis. -- During the 2014-15 flu season, the poor match between the virus used to make the world's vaccine stocks and the circulating seasonal virus yielded a vaccine that was less than 20 percent effective.

While this year's vaccine is a much better match to the circulating seasonal strains of influenza, the shifty nature of the virus and the need to pick the viruses used to make global vaccine stocks well before the onset of the flu season can make vaccine strain selection a shot in the dark.

Two new studies can't prove a link between childhood cancer and light therapy for newborn jaundice but the authors say it still raises enough questions that clinicians should exercise caution in prescribing the treatment for infants whose jaundice is likely to resolve on its own, though that should not deter use of the treatment, known as phototherapy, in babies who otherwise would be at risk of brain damage or hearing loss.

Whether it's paying the electric bill or taking the clothes out of the dryer, there are many daily tasks that we fully intend to complete and then promptly forget about. New research suggests that linking these tasks to distinctive cues that we'll encounter at the right place and the right time may help us remember to follow through. The research is published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

There are many ways we can try to remind ourselves to do something in the future - we can set a calendar alert, jot down a quick note, or even use the old-fashioned string-around-the-finger trick. But the problem with many of these strategies is that they don't provide a reminder that will be noticed when we need it most.

Florence, Italy - 23 May 2016: Influenza vaccination is associated with a lower risk of dementia in patients with heart failure, according to a study in more than 20 000 patients presented today at Heart Failure 2016 and the 3rd World Congress on Acute Heart Failure by Dr Ju-Chi Liu, director of the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, Department of Medicine, Taipei Medical University - Shuang Ho Hospital, in New Taipei City, Taiwan.1