Popular culture may suggest we live in an era where men and women have achieved sexual equality. But new research finds that, when it comes to oral sex, disparities persist - and young men and women tend to gloss over these gender inequalities.

The study, conducted in England by University of the Pacific sociologist Ruth Lewis and Cicely Marston of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, appears online in the Journal of Sex Research.

The researchers interviewed 71 men and women ages 16 to 18, and conducted follow-up interviews a year later. The study focused on accounts of oral sex between men and women, rather than same-sex partners.

On March 29, Nature Genetics published a research article entitled "Genetic lineage tracing identifies endocardial origin of liver vasculature", from Prof. ZHOU Bin's lab at the Institute for Nutritional Sciences (INS), Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, CAS.

Taking advantage of genetic lineage tracing and tissue specific gene knockout technology, researchers found that part of the liver vasculature is derived from the endocardium in the developing heart. During this process, endocardial VEGF/VEGFR2 signaling plays an important role in liver angiogenesis and organogenesis.

My book "Anomaly! - Collider Physics and the Quest for New Phenomena at Fermilab" is in production at World Scientific, with an expected publication date somewhere in August or September. I have explained what this work is about in previous posts, but maybe what I can do here is to just paste here the few lines of description that have been put together for the back cover:

Working with human breast cancer cells, a team of scientists from Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago have successfully turned off a misbehaving protein that fuels the growth of a particularly aggressive, drug-resistant form of the disease known as triple-negative breast cancer.

In a set of lab experiments, the team managed to neutralize the protein, called Nodal, a growth factor already known for its role in early embryonic development.

A description of the work is published in the March 23 issue of the journal Cell Cycle.

CHICAGO (April 4, 2016) -- Patients taking losmapimod, an anti-inflammatory drug currently being developed, for 12 weeks following a heart attack did not show improvements in the trial's primary endpoint, the rate of cardiovascular death, subsequent heart attack or urgent coronary revascularization, which includes placement of a stent or coronary artery bypass surgery, according to research presented at the American College of Cardiology's 65th Annual Scientific Session.

A new survey has documented that black Americans are systematically under-treated for pain relative to white Americans, and the authors allege it is due to the over-prescription and over-use of pain medications among white patients and the under-prescription of pain medications for black patients. Statistics show that black patients are under-treated for pain not only relative to white patients, but relative to World Health Organization guidelines. 

Researchers have demonstrated for the first time that nanoscale electronic components can be made from single DNA molecules.

For two decades, the search has been on to replace the silicon chip in order to keep the hope of Moore's Law alive.  To find a solution to this challenge, the group turned to DNA, whose predictability, diversity and programmability make it a leading candidate for the design of functional electronic devices using single molecules.

When "The Polar Express" film came out, it was creepy to a lot of people. It was a cartoon with faces modeled after the real actors, but still a digital creation. The same response happens when people are around a robot that veers closer to being human in appearance.

It's called The Uncanny Valley - robots have an upward curve of fascination and then suddenly plummet into a valley of repulsion. But it's getting uncanny as we get more comfortable with robots, according to a new study. So much so that touching a robot's intimate areas elicited physiological arousal in humans.

Two hundred and fifty-two million years ago, a series of Siberian volcanoes erupted and sent the Earth into the greatest mass extinction of all time. Billions of tons of carbon were propelled into the atmosphere, radically altering the Earth's climate. Yet, some animals thrived in the aftermath and scientists now know why. In a new study published in Scientific Reports, paleontologists from The Field Museum and their collaborators demonstrate that some ancient mammal relatives, known as therapsids, were suited to the drastic climate change by having shorter life expectancies. When combined with results from survivorship models, this observation leads the team to suggest that these animals bred at younger ages than their predecessors.

Engineers have created a new material with an unusual chemical structure that makes it incredibly hard and yet elastic.

The material can withstand heavy impacts without deforming - even when pushed beyond its elastic limits, it doesn't fracture, instead retaining most of its original strength. That makes it potentially useful in a variety of applications from drill bits to body armor for soldiers to meteor-resistant casings for satellites.

In the journal Scientific Reports, researchers from USC; the University of California, San Diego; and Caltech announced the creation of the material, which was produced by heating a powdered iron composite up to exactly 630 degrees Centigrade (1166 degrees Faherenheit) and then rapidly cooling it.