Parents of children with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnosis go on to have fewer kids after the first signs of the disorder manifest or a diagnosis is made, according to an article in JAMA.

Chronic tissue inflammation is typically associated with obesity and metabolic disease, but new research finds that a level of "healthy" inflammation is necessary to prevent metabolic diseases, such as fatty liver.

Researchers have created a noninvasive way to detect heart-transplant rejection weeks or months earlier than previously possible. The test relies on the detection of increasing amounts of the donor's DNA in the blood of the recipient and does not require the removal of any heart tissue.

The test, called a cell-free DNA test, is different from another blood test, AlloMap, used to detect rejection. The commercially available AlloMap uses a blood sample to analyze the expression of immune-system genes involved in rejection. The researchers found that the cell-free DNA test outperformed AlloMap by a substantial margin.

We all have bad days.

Sometimes "bad" is a woefully insufficient adjective. Ask Dr. Mehmet Oz (henceforth known as The Lizard of Oz). He had a really bad day this week, courtesy of Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO). 

She is not someone you want as an enemy. She tricked The Lizard into testifying before  the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee.

Spiders are traditionally viewed as predators of insects but zoologists have published a study that finds spiders all over the world also prey on fish. 

That spiders are not exclusively insectivorous and larger-sized species supplement their diet by occasionally catching small fish is somewhat new.

A paper presented at the ACM SIGMETRICS conference today revealed a crucial security problem in Google Play, the official Android app store where millions of users of Android, the most popular mobile platform, get their apps. 

Transportation is a big cause of CO2 emissions so when pop star Will.i.am takes a helicopter to a climate event to tell everyone else to be more environmentally responsible, or when environmental journalists fly across the world to attend summits because their 'relationships' are too important to use a video conference, it doesn't inspire a lot of commoners to cut back.

Not that they did anyway. Most people rationalize travel, and simply cut back in ways they would anyway. 

A recent study evaluating HER2 testing in a large cohort of women with breast cancer found important limitations in the conventional way HER2 testing is performed in the US and internationally.

Dartmouth-Hitchcock Norris Cotton Cancer Center physicians and researchers retested tumor samples from a large group of women and found that 22 out of 530 women had their tumor type incorrectly classified. They reported their findings in a publication titled "Assessing the Discordance Rate between Local and Central HER2 Testing in Women with Locally Determined HER2-Negative Breast Cancer," which was published in Cancer on June 13, 2014.

CLEVELAND, Ohio (June 18, 2014)—Calcium and vitamin D are commonly recommended for older women, but the usual supplements may send calcium excretion and blood levels too high for some women, shows a new study published online today in Menopause, the journal of The North American Menopause Society.

This randomized, placebo-controlled trial included 163 older (ages 57 to 90) white women whose vitamin D levels were too low. The women took calcium citrate tablets to meet their recommended intake of 1,200 mg/day, and they took various doses of vitamin D, ranging from 400 to 4,800 IU/day. (The trial was limited by ethnicity because different ethnic groups metabolize calcium and vitamin D differently.)

More and more people are being diagnosed with diabetes and other hormone conditions and that is making a problem become obvious; there aren't going to be enough endocrinologists.

Endocrinologists are specially trained physicians who diagnose diseases related to the glands. They specialize in treating diabetes, obesity, osteoporosis, thyroid disorders, adrenal diseases, and a variety of other conditions related to hormones. But in America of the future, as the government gradually takes over health care, salaries for doctors are going down, not up, so it is not going to be easy to convince specialists to spend the time. A great doctor in the US Army makes the same money as an average supply officer of the same rank and time.