A new study in the journal Molecular Psychiatry has linked children who later developed autism with exposure to elevated levels of steroid hormones (for example testosterone, progesterone and cortisol) in the womb.

Liver cancer is among the fastest-growing and deadliest cancers in the United States with a 17 percent three-year survival rate. Vaccines help direct the immune system to attack invaders by showing it a representative substance, called an antigen, that the body will recognize as foreign, in this case,  Alpha-Fetoprotein (AFP) – normally expressed during development and by liver cancer cells. 

AFP is expressed by about 80 percent of most common liver cancer cells but not typically by healthy adults. For cancer to flourish, cells must revert to an immature state, called dedifferentiation, which is why liver cancer cells express a protein during development and why the immune system can recognize AFP as "self."

Researchers have reported the discovery of 46 ophthalmosaurid ichthyosaurs (marine reptiles)  in the vicinity of the Tyndall Glacier in the Torres del Paine National Park of southern Chile. Among them are numerous articulated and virtually complete skeletons of adults, pregnant females, and juveniles. 

Preservation is excellent and occasionally includes soft tissue and embryos. The skeletons are associated with ammonites, belemnites, inoceramid bivalves, and fishes as well as numerous plant remains.

The enormous concentration of ichthyosaurs is unique for Chile and South America and places the Tyndall locality among the prime fossil Lagerstätten for Early Cretaceous marine reptiles worldwide.

PHILADELPHIA (June 2, 2014) – A new study from researchers at Drexel University adds evidence that using common antidepressant medications during pregnancy may contribute to a higher risk of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) in children, although this risk is still very small.

Results from past studies of prenatal use of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and ASD risk have not been consistent. An ongoing challenge in this line of research is trying to tease apart potential effects of the medication on risk from the effects associated with the condition for which the medication was prescribed (most commonly depression). Based on past studies, both SSRIs and genetic factors associated with depression are likely associated with greater risk of ASD.

The federal government could save taxpayers over $5 billion in the first year by changing the way the government assigns Part D plans for Medicare beneficiaries eligible for low-income subsidies.

Either male hurricanes need to break through that glass ceiling of really dangerous storms, or we underestimate storms with female-sounding names and that puts more people in peril, or business scholars have taken causalation (correlation does not equal causation takes too long to write over and over) to a new level.

An analysis of more than six decades of death rates from U.S. hurricanes shows that severe hurricanes with a more feminine name resulted in a greater death toll, simply because a storm with a feminine name is seen as less foreboding than one with a more masculine name. As a result, people in the path of these severe storms may take fewer protective measures, leaving them more vulnerable to harm.

There is a joke among abortion proponents that if men could get pregnant, abortion clinics would be more common on city streets than Starbucks coffee shops. If that is so, the best way to get something done about insects in developing nations would be to send environmentalists there.  Sitting in cozy western offices, it is easy to rail against DDT and genetic modification but the first time a Union of Concerned Scientists fundraiser gets dengue fever they would be all for science solutions to mosquitoes.

In a letter to the Annals of Internal Medicine, a group of nutritionists object to all of the studies finding supplements are well-marketed but unnecessary costs for most Americans.  

Their rebuttal: they don't harm anyone, they are relatively cheap and science can't prove they don't work. 

Hardly a great endorsement, but the nutritionists from the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University and three other institutions can't really argue for the benefits of supplements, so they instead argue that the case is not 'closed', as an editorial in the same publication last year argued. 

It sounds positively un-American to have government picking winner and losers in the drug marketplace, but the writing is on the wall for our health future: taxpayer-funded Medicare is going to be the economic driver in medical decision-making and policy sooner or later.

And if all eye doctors were told to prescribe the less expensive of two drugs to treat two common eye diseases in older adults, it could save taxpayers $18 billion over a 10-year period, say scholars in a new paper. And the rest of the U.S. health care system could save $29 billion also, according to the findings of a team led by David Hutton, assistant professor of health management and policy at the University of Michigan.

A new study in
Nature Climate Change challenges the assumption in climate models that climate is the primary driver of how quickly organic matter decomposes in different regions. 

A long-term analysis conducted across several sites in the eastern United States found that local factors — from levels of fungal colonization to the specific physical locations of the wood — play a far greater role than climate in wood decomposition rates and the subsequent impacts on regional carbon cycling.

Because decomposition of organic matter strongly influences the storage of carbon, or its release into the atmosphere, it is a major factor in potential changes to the climate.