If we want to protect the health of women, government policies should require that both parents take maternity leave, says social epidemiologist Dr. Patricia O'Campo, director of the Centre for Research on Inner City Health of St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, senior author of a new paper. 

The conclusion was based on a literature review that looked at the influence of public policies on women's overall health and found that parental leave policies tended to reduce the physical and mental stress levels in women who, historically, held the majority of the burden of childcare and household responsibilities, but that making both parents share leave means those duties would be shared also.

If you buy extra virgin olive oil, caveat emptor. Olive oil has been an avenue for corruption for hundreds and perhaps even thousands of years. Some extra virgin olive oil in studies was found to not only not be extra virgin, it wasn't even olive oil.

'Premium' chocolate has the same issue. Anyone can put Premium on a label and the only way to really know was to buy it and taste it - and if you bought it, you compounded the problem.

Sex is like pizza. Even when it's bad, it's still pretty good.

And people like all kinds of pizza. It's entirely subjective so if you ask people about their sexual satisfaction, you might as well take the answers at face value. Rich, Spanish women have better sex lives than poor ones. There you have it, according to the first Spanish National Sexual Health Survey carried out in 2009. But that doesn't mean anyone feels like their sex life is particularly bad. Spanish people are apparently having a great time.

Researchers have determined the isotope composition of the rare trace elements Hafnium and Neodymium in 2.7 billion year-old seawater using high purity chemical sediments from Temagami Banded Iron Formation (Canada) and concluded that large landmasses must have existed then.

The Temagami Banded Iron Formation was formed 2.7 billion years ago during the Neoarchean period and can be used as an archive because the isotopic composition of many chemical elements such as Hafnium and Neodymium directly mirrors the composition of Neoarchean seawater. These two very rare elements allow many valuable conclusions about weathering processes to be drawn. Earlier work has shown that these Canadian rocks only contain chemical elements that directly precipitated from ocean water.

Every child learns about photosynthesis, the process by which plants convert sunlight into energy.

It sounds simple but duplicating it elegantly remains one of the biggest challenges for chemists. Currently, the most efficient methods that we have of making fuel, like hydrogen, from sunlight and water involve expensive metal catalysts like platinum.

A forensic team has tackled a famous case from 1930 - the ‘Blazing Car Murder’ , which sounds like it came right out of the plot of a Sherlock Holmes novel.

On November 6th, 1930, a man was murdered in a car fire in in Hardingstone, Northamptonshire. Alfred Rouse was convicted of the crime and hanged at Bedford Gaol in March 1931. Home Office-appointed pathologist Bernard Spilsbury and another local pathologist, limited by the science and technology of their day, were unable to identify the victim due to the burns, but they reported that lavender colored material and light brown hair were found at the scene and they wrote that the victim’s jawbone was removed to assist with possible identification and tissue samples taken for microscopical examination.

Obesity is a growing problem, that is the downside to a a world where agricultural science has allowed plentiful food to be grown cheaply. With kids the problem is compounded. Obese youth are more likely to have risk factors for cardiovascular disease, such as high cholesterol or high blood pressure. A population-based sample of 5- to 17-year-olds, 70% of obese youth had at least one risk factor for cardiovascular disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

When you think of treating urinary incontinence in senior women, what is the first thing that comes to mind?

Probably not dancing. But maybe it will work, and it sounds like fun. 

For a study of potential benefits of dancing (and virtual reality), researchers added a series of dance exercises via a video game console to a physiotherapy program for pelvic floor muscles. The results of the small study (24 participants) was a greater decrease in daily urine leakage than for the usual program (so, an improvement in effectiveness) as well as no dropouts from the program and a higher weekly participation rate (an increase in compliance). 

Can you believe it's already been 10 years?

Before there was a cute Rover on the Martian surface, delighting us with pithy commentary on Twitter, we had Mars Express paving the way. Ten years ago, on 14 January 2004, it took its very first images, in color and in 3-D.

The problem with diagnosing and treating pain is that it's so subjective. But a new paper in Pain says that brain structure may hold some answers. 

Researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center say that
the amount of grey matter in certain regions of the brain
 is related to how intensely people perceive pain.  

The brain is made up of both grey and white matter. Grey matter processes information much like a computer, while white matter coordinates communications between the different regions of the brain.