We know some glaciers are growing and we know some glaciers are receding. What we did not know until recently is how many glaciers there are, where they are, and what their extents and volumes are.

That has changed - for the first time reliable calculations of the future development of glaciers and their contributions to regional hydrology and global sea-level rise can be derived from an accurate measurement.

The international team mapped all of the world’s glaciers so all glaciologists can study the impacts of a changing climate on glaciers worldwide, and determine their total extent and volume on a glacier-by-glacier basis. Overall, glaciers cover an area of about 730,000 km² and have a volume of about 170,000 km³.

Why do we yawn? It's unclear. One hypothesis is that yawning helps to increase the oxygen supply but there no association between yawning and blood oxygen levels has been found.

Psychologists now have a different notion - that yawning cools the brain.

This must be the boosted b-jets season... Just a few days ago I discussed here the nice new observation of boosted Z->bb decays pulled off by the ATLAS collaboration using 8-TeV proton-proton collisions recorded in 2012. And today I am pleased to see in the Arxiv a new study by D. Ferreira de Lima, A. Papaefstathiou, and M. Spannowsky on the possibility to measure the pair production of Higgs bosons in their decay to two pairs of b-quark jets.

It isn't just U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry insulting Jewish people, the whole world harassed, threatened and used abusive language toward Jews on an individual basis more in 2013.

But there was a silver lining; a 20% decline in violent incidents against Jews.

The annual report by Tel Aviv University's Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry and the Moshe Kantor Database for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism, in cooperation with the European Jewish Congress, highlighted the "severe escalation in anti-Jewish atmosphere," borne out by daily attacks on individuals who reported feeling that their personal safety and communal well-being were jeopardized.

U.S. mothers who have unintended pregnancies return to work sooner than mothers who had planned pregnancies, and that is a reason to mandate contraception at every institution, says Dr. Rada K. Dagher, assistant professor of health services administration in the University of Maryland School of Public Health. 

"We know that it's better for women to take time off after childbirth to take care of their physical and mental health," says Dagher, who has also written that taking six months of maternity leave is optimal for reducing a woman's risk of postpartum depression. "Returning to work soon after childbirth may not be good for these women or for their children." 

The pioneering health insurance exchange in Massachusetts -
the model for President Barack Obama’s health care law
- is headed for the scrap heap. The state wants to merge it with the federal HealthCare.gov enrollment site because it is so dysfunctional.

With terrible timing, Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) scholars say it is working really well and credit it with 2.9% decreased mortality compared to other states. They estimate that the Massachusetts' health reform law has prevented approximately 320 deaths per year—one life saved for each 830 people gaining insurance - and use it as evidence that government health care expansion will save lives.

If you are obese when you are young, it's likely to get worse when you are older.

A recent paper examined the relationship between BMI at age 25, obesity later in life, and biological indicators of health and found that people who were obese by age 25 had a higher chance of more severe obesity later in life, but that current weight, rather than the duration of obesity, was a better indicator of cardiovascular and metabolic risk.  

Cigarette smoking, overuse of screen media and even poor diet have been significantly associated with weekly consumption of sports drinks and energy drinks by adolescents. 

Data for the study were gathered from 20 public middle schools and high schools in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area of Minnesota as part of the population-based study, Eating and Activity in Teens (EAT 2010). Surveys and anthropometric measures were completed by 2,793 adolescents during the 2009–2010 school year.

Mean age of the participants was 14.4 years, participants were equally divided by gender, and 81 percent identified as a racial/ethnic background other than non-Hispanic white.

An international team of researchers has, for the first time, identified an avian influenza virus in a group of Adélie penguins from Antarctica. The virus, found to be unlike any other circulating avian flu, is described in a study published this week in mBio®, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology.

While other research groups have taken blood samples from penguins before and detected influenza antibodies, no one had detected actual live influenza virus in penguins or other birds in Antarctica previously, says study author and Associate Professor Aeron Hurt, PhD, a senior research scientist at the WHO Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza in Melbourne, Australia.

How can science help save the wild finches Darwin made famous in the Galapagos Islands from invasive species?

By leaving cotton balls treated with a mild pesticide laying around. In an experiment, the wild finches used the cotton to help build their nests, which killed parasitic fly maggots and protected baby birds.

Self-fumigation works.

"We are trying to help birds help themselves," says biology professor Dale Clayton, senior author of a study outlining the new technique in Current Biology.