Are they landing marks for aliens? Craters from World War II bombs?

The first pictures, which appeared in 2008 after being taken by a tourist, showed some strange circular formations in the shallow waters off the famous white cliffs of chalk on the island Møn in Denmark. And then they disappeared.

In 2011, the circles came back, and this time there were so many that they made it into media stories.
Since those first images appeared, people have searched for an explanation. 

No more killing the good bacteria along with the bad. An antibiotic "smart bomb" can identify specific strains of bacteria and sever their DNA, eliminating the infection and reducing multi-drug resistant bacteria.

The new approach works by taking advantage of a part of an immune system present in many bacteria called the CRISPR-Cas system. The CRISPR-Cas system protects bacteria from invaders such as viruses by creating small strands of RNA called CRISPR RNAs, which match DNA sequences specific to a given invader. When those CRISPR RNAs find a match, they unleash Cas proteins that cut the DNA.

Marijuana use has been involved in a sharp increase in fatal motor vehicle crashes, with rates nearly tripling since 1999. 

The prevalence of non-alcohol drugs detected in fatally injured drivers in the U.S. has been steadily rising and tripled from 1999 to 2010. Marijuana is the most commonly detected non-alcohol drug involved. 

North American bats are facing a tough new millennium. 600,000 per year are already killed due to government subsidies of wind energy and so far 7 million have died due to White Nose Syndrome.

While we are likely stuck with wind energy for the foreseeable future, there is hope for White Nose Syndrome. Scientists have discovered that the deadly WNS fungus can survive in caves with or without the presence of bats.

If you are stressed about giving a public speech or a presentation to your boss, it helps to talk about it - if the person you are talking to is also stressed out.

People benefit by spending time and conversing with someone whose emotional response is in line with theirs. Such an alignment may be helpful in the workplace.

What would make snakes scarier?

For spiders, the answer is easy. If you see one big enough to be feasting on Orc flesh in the caves under Mt. Doom, run, but snakes are tougher to make scary because they are slow.

Not all of them. Snakes may not look aerodynamic but some snakes can fly - literally. They slither in air, creating an S shape as they glide as much as 90 feet.

But how do they generate the lift to stay airborne? Jake Socha has spent much of his career figuring out flying snakes and says  "They look like they are swimming. They turn their whole body into one aerodynamic surface."

The Annals of the American Thoracic Society has released a comprehensive supplement on the 56th annual Thomas L. Petty Aspen Lung Conference entitled "The Lung Microbiome: A New Frontier in Pulmonary Medicine."

More than 170 microbiologists, basic respiratory scientists, and pulmonary clinicians traveled from nine countries to convene at the three-day conference, which took place in June 2013 in Aspen, CO. Research from 12 state-of-the-art speakers, 24 oral research presentations, and 20 posters from pioneers in the emerging field are included in the supplement, as well as an introduction from conference chairs Richard J. Martin, MD, Sonia Flores, PhD, and Monica Kraft, MD, and a conference summary from James Kiley, PhD.

BOSTON (01/23/14)—A young athlete in seemingly excellent health dies suddenly from a previously undetected cardiovascular condition such as hypertrophic cardiomyopathy in nearly every U.S. state annually. Although these conditions can be detected using electrocardiography (ECG) during a screening exam, the American Heart Association recommends against routine use of ECG, because it has a high false-positive rate. Limiting screening to a history and physical, however, usually fails to identify at-risk athletes. "The sports medicine physical lacks an effective way of ferretting out these heart problems," says Gianmichel Corrado, MD, from Boston Children's Hospital Division of Sports Medicine. Until now.

In laboratory experiments conducted on human cell lines at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, scientists have shown that people carrying certain mutations in two hereditary cancer genes, BRCA2 and PALB2, may have a higher than usual susceptibility to DNA damage caused by a byproduct of alcohol, called acetaldehyde.

The scientists say they suspect that the two genes in their normal forms evolved to protect cells against the damaging effects of acetaldehyde, which can lead to cancer.

While the scientists caution that the research is preliminary, they say their findings suggest that studies on disease risk factors should take into account these particular genetic variations and the use of alcohol.

Currently approved flu vaccines are less effective in the elderly, yet an estimated 90% of influenza-related deaths occur in people over 65. A paper published on January 23rd in PLOS Pathogens reports on the challenges scientists encountered when they were trying to develop a better flu vaccine.

Because immune systems in older people are generally less responsive to vaccination, Jay Evans and colleagues from GlaxoSmithKline Vaccines in Hamilton, USA, were testing so-called adjuvants—vaccine components that provoke a stronger immune reaction—that could be added to the regular flu vaccine cocktail to prompt even weaker immune systems to develop protective immunity against subsequent encounters with the flu virus.