One saved the U.S. space program, another invented a better treatment for leprosy and a third spawned an industry in the American Midwest - but you have probably never heard of these female "legends of chemistry".

Their names are Mary Sherman Morgan, Alice Ball and Rachel Lloyd and they all had amazing accomplishments in chemistry, but their work was nearly lost to history.


Mary Sherman Morgan, Alice Ball and Rachel Lloyd. Credit: The American Chemical Society

This week ACS Reactions shines the spotlight on them so they can get some proper acclaim:

Mars One, a private effort to do what governments seem incapable of achieving, has believers excited about colonizing another planet, but the long-term consequences of living in low or no-gravity conditions remain unclear. 

Mice are not people but if they are an accurate model, it might not go well. A new paper in The FASEB Journal found that spaceflight may be associated with a process of accelerated aging of the immune system. Specifically, researchers found that mice in low gravity conditions experience changes in B lymphocyte production in their bone marrow similar to those observed in elderly mice living in Earth conditions. 

Public participation will have to be at the heart of big data projects in health care and biomedical research and a new report calls for greater transparency about how people's data are used.

The report warns that if people's preferences and values are not taken into account and are instead picked by government elites, projects that could deliver significant public good may continue to be challenged and fail to secure public confidence. Recent health data projects, such as care.data, 100K Genomes, UK Biobank and the Scottish Informatics Programme (SHIP) have each, in their own way, raised ethical questions surrounding the use of data.  The report recommends the introduction of criminal penalties for misuse of data. 

A new study has linked a previously unexplored biological process to the failure of embryos to attach to the uterine wall during in vitro fertilization (IVF).

IVF only has around a 25% success rate, largely due to the high rates of failure when embryos try to implant. Some women suffer from recurrent implantation failure, where the embryo is transferred but fails to attach to the endometrium – the mucus membrane of the uterine wall. This is a significant cause of the failure of IVF as most embryo losses occur at this early stage.

There’s no scientific definition of picky eating, but parents know it when they see it.  Sharon Donovan, a University of Illinois professor of nutrition, says that picky eaters do exhibit definable preferences and mealtime behaviors.

The analysis showed that kids deemed picky eaters by their parents did react differently to common foods and behaved differently at mealtime than kids whose parents said their kids weren’t choosy. The differences were significant and occurred across 16 assessed behaviors, according to Soo-Yeun Lee of the University of Illinois.

Duchenne muscular dystrophy is a relatively rare congenital disease which causes muscle degeneration and eventual death in teenagers.  

Around 1 in 3500 newborns is affected and by approximately 10 years of age, Duchenne patients are dependent on a wheelchair and in increasing need for care. They are not expected to make it to their late 20s and often die from heart or respiratory failure.

There is no current cure for Duchenne muscular dystrophy  but recently researchers from Bern, France, England and Sweden tested a promising active substance successfully.

Teenagers who own smart phones spend more time online – including during the night, which may affect their sleep. A new University of Basel study on more than 300 students reports that teenagers' digital media use during the night is associated with an increased risk of sleep problems and depressive symptoms. 

Though they only became ubiquitous around 2007, most teenagers nowadays own smart phones. Due to wireless Internet connections and cheap data rates, teenagers with smart phones spend more time online and communicate with their peers for less money – for example via WhatsApp – which has changed their digital media use pattern profoundly. 

There are ways non-scientists can assess if the research underlying big claims about cancer cures stack up. Rafael Anderson Gonzales Mendoza/Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA

By Nial Wheate, University of Sydney

Women – and little girls even more so – are desperate to see images and stories that don’t actively oppress them onscreen, says Olivia Murphy. Image: Nadia Mel, CC BY-SA

By Olivia Murphy, University of Sydney