According to the World Health Organization, influenza causes serious illness among millions of people each year, resulting in 250,000 to 500,000 deaths. Those most at risk include infants younger than six months, because they cannot be vaccinated against the disease. Now, researchers at the University of Missouri School of Medicine have identified a naturally occurring protein that, when added to the flu vaccine, may offer protection to babies during their first months of life.

A new position statement goes contrary to the consensus and finds that the introduction of gluten into the infant diet, or the practice of introducing gluten during breast-feeding, does not reduce the risk of celiac disease in infants at risk. The statement appears in the Journal of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition.

A true-muonium only lives for two microseconds. These atoms are made up one positively and one negatively charged elementary particle, also known as muons. Although they have yet to be observed experimentally, a Japanese theoretical physicist has come up with new ways of creating them, in principle anyway, via particle collisions. 

The first method would involve colliding a negatively charged muon and a muonium atom made up of a positive muon and an electron. The second would involve colliding a positively charged muon and a muonic hydrogen atom made up of a proton and a negative muon. . 

Amsterdam, Jan. 18, 2016 - If you're scared of the dentist's needles you're not alone -- but new research means you might not have to put off that appointment again. A study published in Colloids and Surfaces B: Biointerfaces reveals how the dentist could give you anesthetic using a tiny electric current instead of a needle.

The researchers behind the study, from the University of São Paulo, say their new findings could help improve dental procedures and bring relief to millions of people who are scared of needles. It would also save money and avoid contamination and infection, they say.

Urban dwellers may think urban living is better than rural life, and penthouse dwellers may believe living at the top of the city is better than living in a townhouse, but a new study found that survival rates from cardiac arrest decrease the higher up the building a person lives.

Human sounds may convey emotions clearer and faster than words, according to a new paper.

It takes just one-tenth of a second for our brains to begin to recognize emotions conveyed by vocalizations, according to the researchers\. It doesn't matter whether the non-verbal sounds are growls of anger, the laughter of happiness or cries of sadness. More importantly, the researchers have also discovered that we pay more attention when an emotion - such as happiness, sadness or anger - is expressed through vocalizations than we do when the same emotion is expressed in speech.

The first study to evaluate the biodiversity of arthropods in U.S. homes finds that humans share their houses with any of more than 500 different kinds of arthropods - at least on a short-term basis. Arthropods are invertebrate animals with exoskeletons, segmented bodies and jointed limbs, such as insects, spiders, mites and centipedes.

New research published in Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism reveals that a high proportion of long-term care residents have a B12 deficiency. Researchers from the University of Waterloo and the Schlegel-University of Waterloo Research Institute for Aging found that the current state of B12 levels for elderly individuals in long-term care facilities in Ontario warrants considering B12 screening at admission in order to ensure effective treatment.

When a sperm and an egg cell merge a new life begins. This is the case in humans and in animals, but in principle also in plants. A team has discovered a gene trigger in the moss Physcomitrella patens which leads to offspring without fertilization and the researchers assume that this mechanism is conserved in evolution and holds the key to answer fundamental questions in biology.

Actually though most of the stories say it is the first flower to bloom in space, and Scott Kelly tweeted it as such, it turns out that there have been several flowers grown in space before, most recently in 2012, but the first such was way back in 1982. It does seem to be the first Zinnia to flower in space.

Here is Scott Kelly's tweet