For a tiny fraction of the cost of maintaining a nuclear arsenal, the 11 nuclear power states around the world could eliminate neglected infections within their borders—which account for up to 50% of the global disease burden—and beyond, according to an editorial in PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases.

"Great efforts are needed to engage leaders of the nuclear weapons states in a frank dialogue about reallocation of resources toward public health and scientific pursuits for neglected tropical disease R&D and control," says Dr. Peter Hotez, Research Professor at The George Washington University and author of the editorial.

 Researchers from Cornell University say eating less may be as simple as leaving serving dishes on the stove and off the table.

The team conducted a study involving 78 men and women and found that people eat a lot less, almost 30 percent less, if food is not readily accessible--like not sitting in front of them.

The research was presented last week at the Experimental Biology conference in Anaheim, California.

The finding provides more evidence for the idea that subtle cues like dining environment and plate and portion size can determine what, when and how much people eat.

Politicians may only tell us what we want to hear, but not just because they're vote hustlers looking to stay in office. Researchers writing in the British Medical Journal, say it's also because voters interpret everything elected officials say based on their own political views.

The authors argue that "it is possible for two well-informed groups of people faced with the same evidence to reach completely different conclusions about what should be done."

Scientists have discovered a deep ocean current with a volume equivalent to 40 Amazon Rivers near the Kerguelen plateau, in the Indian Ocean sector of the Southern Ocean.

Writing in Nature Geoscience, the researchers say the current – more than three kilometers below the Ocean's surface – is an important pathway in a global network of ocean currents that influence climate patterns.

While earlier expeditions had detected evidence of the current system, they were not able to determine how much water the current carried. The new experiment deployed current-meter moorings anchored to the sea floor at depths of up to 4500m. Each mooring reached from the sea floor to a depth of 1000m and measured current speed, temperature and salinity for a two-year period.

A study in Applied and Environmental Microbiology suggests that bacteria common to spacecraft may be able to survive the harsh conditions on Mars long enough to inadvertently contaminate the planet with terrestrial life.

Despite sterilization efforts made to reduce the bioload on spacecraft, recent research has shown that diverse microbial communities remain at the time of launch, including acinetobacter, bacillus, escherichia, staphylococcus and streptococcus.

The fossilized jaw of a 95 million-year-old pterosaur discovered in Texas in 2006 has been identified as a new genus and species of flying reptile - Aetodactylus halli.

The rare pterosaur — literally a winged lizard — is also one of the youngest members in the world of the family Ornithocheiridae, and only the second ornithocheirid ever documented in North America.

The newly-named lizard is described in the Journal of vertebrate Paleontology.

A long lost light reflector left on the lunar surface by the Soviet Union nearly 40 years ago has been found by a team of NASA physicists.

The French-built laser reflector was sent aboard the unmanned Luna 17 mission, which landed on the moon November 17, 1970, releasing a robotic rover that roamed the lunar surface and carried the missing laser reflector. The Soviet lander and its rover, called Lunokhod 1, were last heard from on September 14, 1971.

Researchers have developed and tested a modified enzyme called CocE that can break down cocaine into inactive products nearly 1,000 times faster than the human body does regularly.

In combination with previous studies that demonstrate CocE's effectiveness in rodent models, the new results suggest that CocE may be a good candidate for clinical treatment of cocaine toxicity.

The research was presented at the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics annual meeting on April 25.

I am in Tilburg, Netherlands, for a conference on the future of philosophy of science. Ah!, you might say, and what would that look like?

The possibility that autism is more common in offspring of older parents has generated considerable interest. To investigate the theory, a study using data from 10 US study sites participating in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network, was developed to examine the relation between parental age at delivery and the prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Confirmation of such an association has important public health implications in light of increasing trends in recent decades for couples to delay having children.