Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB) found in flame retardant cloth, paint, adhesives and electrical transformers, have been banned since 1979, but if you live on top of a waste disposal site or you have a 40 year old couch, you could still be exposed to them.

Some new mothers who are breast-feeding (and some who should have stopped by now) have turned to medications to help increase their milk supply - and that meant off-label use of domperidone, a nausea medication, to stimulate breast milk production.

Some studies have suggested it may be related to negative side effects, including irregular heartbeat and sudden cardiac death, but a new article in Journal of Human Lactation,
finds that there is no risk to the babies who drink the milk, though the risks to women may be a concern.   

By Catherine Loveday, University of Westminster

A new optical technique by which audio information can be extracted from high-speed video recordings, by using an image-matching process based on vibration from sound waves.

The technique is based on the fact that sound waves are mechanical waves that cause air to vibrate when traveling, the paper notes. That vibration through air can cause vibration of objects located in its traveling path, especially if the objects are lightweight, thin, and flexible, such as a piece of paper. The vibrations, although usually with small amplitudes, can be detected and analyzed algorithmically, and audio reconstructed based on those calculations.

Some paper have suggested a link between the diabetes medication pioglitazone and bladder cancer but a new analysis, including more than 1,000,000 people in six populations worldwide, has found no link between either pioglitazone or rosiglitazone (also known as Avandia) and bladder cancer.

Bladder cancer is the ninth most common cancer in the world, with 430,000 new cases diagnosed in 2012. Europe and North America have the highest incidence of bladder cancer, with an even higher incidence in people with diabetes.

By Ottoline Leyser, University of Cambridge

Even while the Roman empire was in decline, precious substances, such as frankincense, were being transported to its furthest northern outpost in Britain.

Archaeologists writing in the Journal of Archaeological Science used molecular analysis of materials previously thought to be of little interest, debris inside burial containers and residues on skeletal remains and plaster body casings, to show that frankincense were being used even in the farthest corners of the Empire. Evidence for the use of resins in ancient funerary rites is uncommon outside of Egypt. 

You can be a doctor without becoming an American citizen, people move here all of the time and go to medical school.

They just do it legally. The US president has used an executive order to grant amnesty to an unknown number of illegal aliens currently residing in America and now a group of scholars writing in Academic Medicine contend that not only should people in the US be able to go to medical school if they apply, it is an ethical mandate.

A few years ago, Europe had a policy making it illegal to sell fruit that was not cosmetically ideal. People overpaying for food deserve to have it aesthetically pleasing as well, was the reasoning, and having someone buy ugly fruit was a sign of inequality.

That policy was changed but for people who want to pay to have ideal fruit, there are still ways:  recently have demonstrated a laser biospeckle technique capable of detecting fruits' "climacteric peak" so it will always be harvested at just the right time. That means apples, bananas, pears and tomatoes could be available to well-heeled consumers during "peak edibleness."

Androgen deprivation therapy (ADT), in which an injectable or implanted medication is used to disrupt the body's ability to make testosterone, is a common treatment for prostate cancer but should not be used in men whose cancer has not spread beyond the prostate, according to a new study.

The findings are important for men with longer life expectancies because the therapy exposes them to more adverse side effects, and it is associated with increased risk of death and deprives men of the opportunity for a cure by other methods. ADT is already known to have significant side effects such as heart disease, diabetes, increased weight gain and impotence; the new study suggests ADT may also lead to earlier death.