With summer just around the corner in Europe and America, it's time to think about the risk of too much sun exposure.  One greater hazard has less risk - melanoma - but though it is less common than some other types of skin cancer, it is more likely to grow and spread. 

In 2019, an estimated 96,000 new melanomas will be diagnosed and men are far greater impacted than women. About 7,000 people will die, nearly twice as many men as women. It is 20X more common in people of Caucasian descent than people of African descent. Though the average age of diagnosis is 63, it defies the cancer stereotype in young people, being one of the most common cancers in young adults.

And there it starts. At a very important juncture for fundamental science, physicists are gathering in Granada this week as part of a multi-pronged program that will lead to agreeing on what are the priorities for particle physics in Europe. Given that particle physics is a global, collaborative endeavour nowadays, with experiments typically composed by thousands of physicists from all around the world, we can be sure that what will be agreed is going to shape the future years of this experimental discipline, as not only European projects are discussed, but more in general all projects to which European scientists contribute.

When most people think of bats they think of vampires or the World's Greatest Detective, but biologically they are much more diverse than pop culture reveals. With more than 1,300 species worldwide they are one of the largest groups of mammals. Some have large ears, others sport elaborate noses or long jaws. There's a lot of morphological variety, and that's a great lesson for what types of evolutionary forces shape the shapes of animals. Like their skulls.

Do you vape? A new paper suggests you may have been abused as a child - at least in statistical parsing of a small survey.

A sample of 208 people aged 18-21 was used to create a correlation between childhood maltreatment and e-cigarette use, and explored the potential role of impulsivity in linking childhood maltreatment to e-cigarette use via a series of models controlling for demographic characteristics. Other papers have claimed that smoking is caused by childhood maltreatment but this is the first to claim a link between nicotine vapor and child abuse.

U.S. Right To Know, an industry-funded trade group that was created to harass and intimidate scientists, has teamed up with a few academic allies to promote 129 Freedom of Information Act requests they submitted related to Coca-Cola.  To harass scientists as effectively as possible, they make requests overly broad so they can claim to "reveal" some suitably cosmic number, in this case 87,000 documents.

A few weeks ago I posted here an idea of how one could design an algorithm that looks for new physics processes in Large Hadron Collider data, without giving the algorithm any knowledge whatsoever of how those new physics processes should behave.

After a baby is born, the priorities and schedules of parents shift dramatically. This is especially true for mothers (sorry dads, we know you change diapers) but after spending 40 weeks thinking about their health because of the little person they've been carrying, they often neglect their own care during the 'fourth trimester', after an infant is born.

And that has repercussions.  A new national survey by Orlando Health found more than 25% of mothers did not think about their own health after giving birth, while more than 40% say they felt anxious, overwhelmed or depressed.

Using patients who were referred to a subspecialty pain medicine clinic to be treated for widespread muscular/connective tissue pain, and then separating people who met the criteria for fibromyalgia into smaller groups by age, a small experiment (n=23) found that patients with medication that targeted insulin resistance, metformin, reported less pain. 

Can all nuclear energy be weaponized? It could, according to US politicians in the 1990s, when President Bill Clinton and Senator John Kerry mortally wounded nuclear energy development, to the cheers of their constituents. It was all based on claims by environmentalists that nuclear energy invariably led to nuclear weapons.

Physicians have higher rates of suicide than the general public despite having prestigious jobs respected by the public and good pay.

A new podcast and accompanying article in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) looks at things that are important to know.

1. Increased suicidal ideation begins as early as medical school, with nearly 25 percent of students surveyed reporting suicidal ideation within the last 12 months. Obviously that does not mean medical schools cause suicide, it could mean that medical schools prize themselves on being stressful or it could even mean people with other qualities are more likely to go to medical school - but also have psychological issues.