London, UK, Saturday 12 April 2014: A UK study[i] investigating the link between low vitamin D status and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) in British children has identified a genetic variant associated with the disease's severity.

The research, conducted by the King's College Hospital Paediatric Liver Centre and the University of Surrey's School of Biosciences and Medicine, and funded by the Children's Liver Disease Foundation retrospectively analysed the medical records of 120 paediatric patients with NAFLD.

It's no secret that bacterial parasites can change creatures. The parasitic lancet liver fluke infects the brain of ants, compelling them to climb to the tip of a blade of grass and into the mouth of a grazing animal. Another parasite is thought to change the behavior of rats to make them more susceptible to predation. 

They basically become zombies. And some bacterial parasites can even turn plants into the living dead.

Scientists who monitored skuas in Adélie Land and the Kerguelen Islands for ten years have found when these seabirds exhibit high mercury levels in their blood, their breeding success decreases. 

The researchers from the Centre d'Etudes Biologiques de Chizé and from the Littoral, Environnement et Sociétés Laboratory (CNRS / Université de La Rochelle) say that this is the first time that toxicological measurements have been combined with a population study carried out over such a long period in the Antarctic and Subantarctic. 

Before 1940, Nobel Prizes were a reflection of the rapidly evolving state of science. It was uncommon for an award to happen for a discovery 20 years or more after the research happened, it seemed more like a concession prize because nothing had happened recently - in physics, chemistry and medicine, delayed awards only occurred 11%, 15% and 24% of the time.

By 1985, those percentages were 60%, 52% and 45%. This is only a problem that has cropped up in science and medicine, other prizes are quickly awarded on pop culture status; President Obama was apparently given one, based on when nominations happen, for his first inauguration speech.

A recent paper found an increased risk for malignant melanoma in men who took sildenafil (Viagra) for erectile dysfunction.

Unlike some observational studies, this is not being exaggerated by attention-whoring researchers. They are cautious about what it means and doesn't mean. The media is making hay, of course, and they may be making it for good reason.

The prospective cohort study was based on participants in the Health Professionals’ Follow-up Study who were questioned regarding sildenafil use for erectile dysfunction in the year 2000. A total of 25,848 men were used after excluding those who reported cancers at baseline.

An analysis of temperature data since 1500 A.D. all but rules out the possibility that global warming in the industrial era is a natural fluctuation of climate, according to a paper in Climate Dynamics.

Want to reduce jet lag? A new app called Entrain claims it is the first to use a numbers-based approach  to "entrainment," the scientific term for synchronizing circadian rhythms with the outside hour. It's based on work by  Danny Forger, a professor of mathematics at the University of Michigan, and Kirill Serkh, a doctoral student at Yale University.   

Entrain is built around the premise that light, particularly from the sun and in wavelengths that appear to our eyes as the color blue, is the strongest signal to regulate circadian rhythms. These fluctuations in behaviors and bodily functions, tied to the planet's 24-hour day, do more than guide us to eat and sleep. They govern processes in each one of our cells.

In Tom Wolfe's "The Right Stuff" and in 1940s engineering, there was a demon in the air at 750 miles per hour, a line some said could not be crossed. It was called the Sound Barrier for that reason.

If that demon could cause a plane to break apart in air, imagine what it would do to a car on the ground. 

We'll find out in 2015. The BLOODHOUND SSC will make a test run at almost 800 MPH in 2015, which will beat the current official land speed record of 763 MPH, and will attempt 1,000 MPH in 2016. To keep her between the ditches, engineers will have to model how the car will cope with the supersonic rolling ground, rotating wheels and resulting shock waves in close proximity to the test surface at Hakskeen Pan, South Africa.  

It is barely possible to see the parasitic worm Amakusaplana acroporae when it sits on its favorite hosts, the staghorn coral Acropora, thanks to its excellent camouflage. However, new research from the University of Southampton has found that the small flatworm could cause significant damage to coral reefs. 

To a high degree, newspapers mirror the viewpoints of the political elite, a bolster to the 'elite-driven media' theory about editorial viewpoints, according to a new analysis in thejournal Media, War&Conflict.

The scholars from the University of Copenhagen elite-driven media theory may explain why support for the war efforts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya have been remarkably consistent in the small, non-belligerent nation of Denmark.