In what they say is the first study that looks at a variety of healthcare providers and their implicit attitudes towards lesbian women and gay men, scholars say they have found there is widespread implicit bias toward lesbian women and gay men. 

A loss of dietary diversity during the past 50 years could be a contributing factor to the rise in obesity, Type 2 diabetes, gastrointestinal problems and other diseases, according to a lecture by Mark Heiman, vice president and chief scientific officer at MicroBiome Therapeutics, at IFT15: Where Science Feeds Innovation hosted by the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) in Chicago.

Heiman said diet is the principal regulator of the GI microbiome, the ecosystem of the human GI tract. The microbiome contains trillions of bacteria (microbiota) in a solution of unabsorbed macro- and micro-nutrients. The microbiota use the remnants from digestion to create new signaling molecules that allow the microbiota to communicate with a person's metabolic and GI regulatory system.

By Charles Choi, Inside Science -- If you poured a glass of water on a table, you would expect to get a puddle that spreads for a while and then stops. However, until now, the formulas that scientists used to describe the flow of fluids suggested the puddle should never stop spreading.

Now researchers have solved the mystery of why such a puddle would not keep spreading endlessly — the culprit is a force that acts on microscopic scales. This solution to such a simple everyday phenomenon could have far-reaching ramifications for everything from improving advanced electronics to fighting climate change.

Are the first signs that someone is at risk of developing cardiovascular disease detectable in toddlers and preschoolers?

There's evidence that low vitamin D levels in adults are linked to cardiovascular disease, as well as other health issues such as obesity, hypertension and diabetes. But that link hadn't been studied in children. Researchers in Toronto examined vitamin D levels in children ages one to five and the non HDL- cholesterol level in their blood, a marker of cardiovascular health. (Non-HDL cholesterol is basically all of a person's cholesterol minus his or her HDL or good cholesterol.)

Music training, begun as late as high school, may help improve the teenage brain's responses to sound and sharpen hearing and language skills, suggests a new study. The research indicates that music instruction helps enhance skills that are critical for academic success. 

The gains were seen during group music classes included in the schools' curriculum, suggesting in-school training accelerates neurodevelopment.

In a new study, women considered the position and shape of the urethral opening to be the least important aspects of a penis' appearance.

They also perceived the genitals of men who underwent surgery to treat distal hypospadias--a congenital condition in which the opening of the urethra is on the underside of the penis--to be as normal-looking as nonaffected, circumcised genitals.

"The information may help prevent the development of shame or impaired genital perceptions about penile appearance," said Dr. Norma Ruppen, lead author of the study.

Citation: Ruppen-Greeff, N.K., Weber, D.M., Gobet, R. & Landolt, M.A., 'What is a good looking penis? How women rate the penile appearance of men with surgically corrected hypospadias', Journal of Sexual Medicine

The downside to computer programs is they lack the ability to interpret. A tiny human can look at a picture of a chicken and a cartoon of a chicken and know that's a chicken while a computer program cannot.

Researchers from Queen Mary University of London believe they have overcome one obstacle and have built the first computer program that can recognize hand-drawn sketches better than humans. They call it Sketch-a-Net and in their tests it is capable of correctly identifying the subject of sketches 74.9 percent of the time compared to humans that only managed a success rate of 73.1 percent.

The human organism contains hundreds of distinct cell types that often differ from their neighbors in shape and function. To acquire and maintain its characteristic features, each cell type must express a unique subset of genes. Neurons, the functional units of our brain, develop through differentiation of neuronal precursors, a process that depends on coordinated activation of hundreds and possibly thousands of neuron-specific genes.

It may seem like infants just sleep, eat and cry, but newborn brains are full of activity and they are already gathering and processing important information from the world around them. At just two days after birth, babies are already able to process language using processes similar to those of adults.

Researchers have demonstrated that they are sensitive to the most important parts of words, the edges, a cognitive mechanism which has been repeatedly observed in older children and adults.

New research has found talented adolescent female athletes are bullied for their successes by their school peers.

The research also revealed that being bullied at school about their sports achievements left young female athletes with lasting psychological and social problems they carried into adulthood.

In a self-professed sports-mad country, why is this happening?