The birth rate is declining in all industrialised countries, and socioeconomic factors and women's age are not solely to blame. Male reproductive health and environmental factors are also significant, as concluded in a new scientific review article. The article was recently published in the prestigious American journal Physiological Reviews.

Behind the article are fertility researchers from Denmark, the US and Finland. The researchers studied a number of factors related to fertility, and one of the main conclusions of their study was that poor semen quality contributed to increases in infertility and the use of assisted reproductive technology.

37% percent of online adults say that health and medicine is among the topics they find most interesting, while 32% identify science and technology in their top three, according to a 

The developed world loves to put on food drives, places to donate canned goods to the needy. It is an easy feel-good thing to do. But it may be unnecessary, according to findings in The European Journal of Public Health.

Too many tests at the doctor's office could cost you more than just dollars. In addition to the huge hit to your wallet, there's also the potential harm of false positives, and just because a test has traditionally been done for a condition doesn't mean it's the best way to treat it.

U-M neurologist Brian Callaghan, M.D., M.S., is helping lead a national push to determine what neurologic tests or services are performed more than they should be.

Scientists and teachers have combined to develop a simple spreadsheet-based method of teaching aerodynamic drag to 14 and 15 year olds. By measuring the speed of one of their classmates riding a bike and taking a photo in order to measure the frontal area of the cyclist, the students were able to calculate the drag co-efficient.

The results are published today, 11th December 2015, in the journal Physics Education.

Scientists have developed a technique to perform dietary analysis of fish by analysing microscopic tooth wear.

The process, which involves taking moulds of the teeth similar to those a dentist might take, used focus variation microscopy to digitally capture details of the tooth surfaces, zooming in to an area just 1/7th of a mm in width, around the same as that of a human hair.

These 3D data allowed the researchers to distinguish between different diet by comparing the roughness and shape of the tooth surface on a tiny scale. This offers a new method to analyse fishes diet based on the fossil record.

The results are published today, 11th December 2015, in the journal Surface Topography: Metrology and Properties.

Tropical groundwater may prove to be a climate-resilient source of freshwater in the tropics as intense rainfall favours the replenishment of these resources, according to a new study published in Environmental Research Letters.

As climate observations show that global warming leads to fewer but more intense rainfalls, a clearer understanding of how these sources are replenished is crucial for developing strategies for groundwater usage that are better adapted to the greater variability in rainfall and river discharge brought about by climate change.

Scientists have carried out the first ever genome-wide survey of heritable molecular changes that regulate gene activity in wheat. Epigenetic marks are chemical tags which physically attach themselves to DNA, and modify its function without changing the genetic code. DNA methylation is one such mechanism of epigenetic gene expression control that can be passed down to future generations.

Now, developing technology has allowed scientists to study DNA methylation across the complex and challenging wheat genome.

Women who used contraceptive implants or injections after an abortion are a lot more likely to have another one, finds a large United Kingdom study. Long-acting reversible contraception (LARC) such as implants and Depo-Provera are often promoted as contraceptive method of choice for women undergoing abortion.

The authors found that women who used either implants or the contraceptive injection Depo-Provera were more likely to have another abortion 2-5 years after the first termination compared to those who used other methods. While LARC methods are 'effective', explain the authors, "discontinuation rates are high, and therefore make terminations more likely." 

Most climate models overestimate the increase in global precipitation due to climate change, according to an analysus of over 25 models and found they underestimate the increase in absorption of sunlight by water vapor as the atmosphere becomes moister, and therefore overestimate increases in global precipitation.

The team found global precipitation increase per degree of global warming at the end of the 21st century may be about 40 percent less than what the models, on average, currently predict.