Climate change has happened throughout history, there are abandoned cities in places we would consider inhospitable, but they weren't at the times. As the climate changed, it has altered habitats not just for birds and bees and everything in between, but humans as well.

1990 is not some special time in world history, despite some claims that fixing one greenhouse gas would prevent climate change. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Aarhus University in Denmark say that by looking at estimates of climate and land-use change speeds they can determine the potential combined impacts of both climate and land-use change on plants, animals and ecosystems across the country. 

Both mother and baby are at increased risk for complications of flu infection during pregnancy and prenatal care providers say they advise women to get the flu vaccine, but many pregnant women don't do it.

Robert Arao, MPH, a biostatistician at Group Health Research Institute, did a statewide survey to assess what doctors think and do about flu vaccines for pregnant women. 

The small body size associated with the African pygmy phenotype is probably a selective adaptation for rainforest hunter-gatherers, according to a new study, but since all African pygmy phenotypes do not have the same genetic underpinning it is likely a more recent adaptation than previously thought, according to a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science.

 A phenotype is the outward expression of genetic makeup and while two individuals with the same phenotype may look alike, their genes may differ substantially. The pygmy phenotype exists in many parts of Africa, Southeast Asia, the Philippines and perhaps South America and is usually associated with rainforest hunter-gathers rather than people who farm.

The "Great Recession" and over 90 million Americans unemployed has impacted everything except the stock market and hole sales of wealthy elites, but 40 percent of elders reported a decrease in "financial strain" between 2006 and 2010.  

Men and women differ in plenty of ways,and scientists have long known that genetic differences buried deep within our DNA underlie these distinctions but past research has primarily focused on understanding how the genes that encode proteins act as sex determinants. In a new Genetics paper, scientists show that a subset of very small genes encoding short RNA molecules -
miRNAs
- also play a key role in differentiating male and female tissues in the fruit fly. 

A miRNA is a short segment of RNA that fine-tunes the activation of one or several protein-coding genes. miRNAs are able to silence the genes they target and, in doing so, orchestrate complex genetic programs that are the basis of development.

A few days ago, I was an astrophysicist and contributed to a research project by organizing sunspot images in order of complexity. After I’d had enough of that, I became a biochemist and worked late into the night on a project creating synthetic RNA.

Actually, I am not a scientist. Before yesterday I hadn’t really studied sunspots and I am still not entirely sure what RNA does. And yet, I was welcomed by the research team. It turns out they didn’t care about my lack of scientific knowledge. What they needed were my visual and gaming skills.

The downside to electric cars is both cost and driving range. Cost simply takes time and adoption; as has been shown in every technology from agriculture to computers, it only gets affordable for the masses after enough rich people have uptake. Driving range is a show-stopper for many, though. The stories in Silicon Valley of 'charge rage', where employees at companies are firing off angry emails at each other over available plugs rather than working, have made fewer companies want to install charging stations at all. But without them, many people can't get home.

Heterosexual white women in America were twice as likely as racial or sexual minority women to obtain medical help to get pregnant, according to an analysis of surveys from 2002 and 2006.

Will political involvement in health care coverage make the difference now? In some cases. Health insurance coverage was listed as a key factor for lesbian women but not minority women. Surveys taken today would likely have a dramatically different result, with everyone who wants an option covered insisting they can't do it unless it's in their health insurance plan.

There’s an emerging trend, of late, in the seemingly endless saga of the chemical bisphenol A (BPA), which is most commonly used to make polycarbonate plastic and epoxy resins.  Although the BPA saga has not yet become completely passé, much of the attention that had been given to BPA is now focused on alt