CLEVELAND, Ohio (Wednesday, March 30, 2016)--A Swedish population study is helping answer lingering questions about hormone therapy safety. Published online today in Menopause, the journal of The North American Menopause Society, the study shows that estrogen-only therapy carries a lower risk of blood clots than combined estrogen-progestogen therapy, but there is no significantly increased risk of clots with combination therapy when the estrogen is transdermal, and vaginal estrogen doesn't raise the risk at all.

Mind wandering--sometimes seen as daydreaming or "zoning out"--has been shown to facilitate creative thinking and problem solving, but in the wrong context it can become distracting or even dangerous. Inattentive students can get behind in class, and drivers who aren't paying attention to the road are far more likely to end up in accidents. And for some professions, like surgeons or air traffic controllers, zoning out on the job can lead to disaster.

Most research looking at mind wandering has assumed that all mind wandering is inherently unintentional, but findings from a new study suggest otherwise: People frequently report zoning out on purpose, and the causes of this "intentional" type of mind wandering can differ from the causes of unintentional mind wandering.

Imagine losing an eye, an arm or even your spinal cord. When we are wounded, our bodies, and those of other mammals, generally respond by sealing the wound with scar tissue. The newt, however, has evolved unique strategies that allow it to repeatedly regenerate lost tissues, even as an adult.

Newts are the masters of regeneration. No other animal can match their regenerative abilities in body parts including the limbs, the tail and spinal cord, parts of the eye (such as the retina and the lens), the brain, the heart and the jaws. What happens when a newt loses, for example, a leg? A mass of cells, called a blastema, is generated at the stump, from which a new, fully functional leg is eventually regenerated.

Women who perceive that their sexual partner is imposing perfectionist standards on them may suffer sexual dysfunction as a result, psychologists at the University of Kent have found.

In the first in-depth study of how different types of sexual perfectionism affect women over a period of time, researchers also found that 'partner-prescribed' sexual perfectionism contributed to negative self-image.

The annual economic cost of the nearly 16,000 premature births linked to air pollution in the United States has reached $4.33 billion, according to a report by scientists at NYU Langone Medical Center. The sum includes $760 million spent on prolonged hospital stays and long-term use of medications, as well as $3.57 billion in lost economic productivity due to physical and mental disabilities associated with preterm birth.

With people wanting to use smaller electronic devices, smaller energy storage systems are needed. Researchers of Aalto University in Finland have demonstrated the fabrication of electrochemically active organic lithium electrode thin films, which help make microbatteries more efficient than before. Researchers used a combined atomic/molecular layer deposition (ALD/MLD) technique, to prepare lithium terephthalate, a recently found anode material for a lithium-ion battery.

"Autistic people are cold and feel no empathy." True? It is a pervasive stereotype, but when analyzed through the lens of science, reality turns out to be quite different. According to a study at SISSA, carried out in collaboration with the University of Vienna, when autistic people are placed in "moral dilemma" situations, they show an empathic response similar to the general population. The myth of coldness in autism is likely due to the presence of the subclinical trait of alexithymia, which is often associated with autism, but is distinct and can be present in the general population, and is characterized by the inability to recognize one's own, or others' emotions. The study was published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Metabolites - substances that are created during metabolism -- can provide a wealth of information about individual health, disease, diet, and life-style. Now, they can tell us even more. Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) researchers and collaborators at Kyoto University have recently discovered metabolites that are specifically related to aging and shed light on how the human body ages. The team, led by OIST's Professor Yanagida, published their results in PNAS.

A large, multi-center study led by the UC Davis School of Medicine for the first time has shown that people as young as their 40s have stiffening of the arteries that is associated with subtle structural damage to the brain that is implicated in cognitive decline and Alzheimer's disease later in life.

A collaboration of UC Davis, the Framingham Heart Study and Boston University, among others, the study found that, among young healthy adults, higher aortic "stiffness" was associated with reduced white matter volume and decreased integrity of the gray matter, and in ages much younger than previously described.

Like most annuals, lettuce plants live out their lives in quiet, three-act dramas that follow the seasons. Seed dormancy gives way to germination; the young plant emerges and grows; and finally in the climax of flowering, a new generation of seeds is produced. It's remarkably predictable, but the genetics that coordinates these changes with environmental cues has not been well understood.