Where should we go, on Mars, to look for droplets and streaks of present day liquid water? You may have heard of the "warm seasonal flows", and the recent "swimming pools of bacteria". 

However,  there are several other promising ideas for habitats such as the "Flow like features", the advancing sand dunes bioreactor, and possibilities for life using the humidity of the night time air on Mars. It's an exciting field with many new discoveries and ideas every year, and it is hard to keep up with the developments.

In the United States northeast, there is a joke that there is an easy way to spot someone who went to Harvard or Yale; it will be the person asking which college you attended. You can substitute Mensa or lots of other groups that have status for members but a new psychology paper says what most knew; entrenched members of groups are more relaxed about their status than marginal ones.

Thousands of fishing traps are lost each year in U.S. waters. These derelict traps continue "ghost fishing" and catch fish, crabs, and other species such as turtles, which results in losses to habitat, fisheries, and the watermen who depend on the resources - losses that are largely preventable, according to a new NOAA paper in the Marine Pollution Bulletin. 

The paper looks at the results of seven NOAA-funded studies in different fisheries across the U.S., and compares the severity of the problem, and common management challenges across the regions. It also reports certain findings from the studies for the first time in peer-reviewed literature, such as estimates of derelict trap numbers and how long they remain in the environment. 

The tectonic plate that dominates the Pacific "Ring of Fire" is not as rigid as most assume, and it's getting less fiery. according to researchers at Rice University and the University of Nevada. 

Epidemiologists have correlated eating over 10 portions per week of tomatoes with an 18 percent lower risk of developing prostate cancer, new research suggests.

Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer in men worldwide and diagnosed rates are higher in developed countries, which some claim means is due to a Westernized diet and lifestyle.

To assess if following dietary and lifestyle recommendations reduces risk of prostate cancer, scholars at the Universities of Bristol, Cambridge and Oxford looked at the diets and lifestyle of 1,806 men aged between 50 and 69 with prostate cancer and compared with 12,005 cancer-free men.

A growing number of consumers are willing to pay a premium for fruits, vegetables and other foods labeled "organic", but whether they're getting what the label claims is another matter. 

For over a decade it has been known that since there is no surprise spot testing of farms, and very little on imported food at all, organic labels may be meaningless. A few years ago, 25 percent of the organic food bought from Whole Foods stores was found to be conventional.

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the second leading cause of cancer-associated death worldwide, due to the difficulty in treating this cancer using conventional chemotherapeutic drugs such as doxorubicin, epirubicin, cisplatin, 5-fluorouracil or etoposide.

New simulations hope to uncover the origin of the ultraviolet light that bathes the cosmos, helping scientists understand how galaxies were built. 

"Which produces more light? A country's biggest cities or its many tiny towns?" asks Dr. Andrew Pontzen, University College London cosmologist and lead author of the study. "Cities are brighter, but towns are far more numerous. Understanding the balance would tell you something about the organisation of the country. We're posing a similar question about the universe: does ultraviolet light come from numerous but faint galaxies, or from a smaller number of quasars?" 

Credit: CDC

Listeria is a dreaded bacterium that can be found in foods. The bacterium is notoriously difficult to fight because it has an almost uncanny ability to adapt to changes in its surrounding. In the United States, it is more prevalent in products like raw milk, foods that have not been washed, like organic produce, and improperly handled meat.

As early as 2015 China’s use of thermal coal for electricity could peak. Bret Arnett/Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA

By James Whitmore, The Conversation