The sale of human breast milk on the internet poses serious risks to infant health and needs urgent regulation, according to a new editorial in BMJ.

The nutritional benefits of breast milk for babies are widely documented, but many new mothers find it difficult or are unable to breastfeed. In addition to social pressure, this pushes some mothers to purchase human breast milk on the internet - a market that has been growing rapidly. Despite appearing as healthy and beneficial products, many new mothers and even some healthcare workers are not aware that this market is "dangerous" and "putting infant health at risk" because it is not regulated, argues Sarah Steele, a lecturer at the Global Health, Policy and Innovation Unit at Queen Mary University London, and colleagues.

There are significant differences in personalities between regions in Britain - Scots are amongst the friendliest and most co-operative residents, Londoners the most open and Welsh people are the least emotionally stable, according to analysis of surveys of just under 400,000 people from England, Wales or Scotland (Northern Ireland was excluded as sample sizes were too small), around two-thirds of whom were female.

The study is based on data that was gathered as part of the Big Personality Test, an online survey published by the BBC in 2009 as part of a collaboration between the BBC and the scientific community, BBC Lab UK.

Researchers have captured images of the underlying biological activity within brain cells and their tree-like extensions, or dendrites, in mice that show how their brains sort, store and make sense out of information during learning. 

In a new study, neuroscientists tracked neuronal activity in dendritic nerve branches as the mice learned motor tasks such as how to run forward and backward on a small treadmill. They concluded that the generation of calcium ion spikes -- which appeared in screen images as tiny "lightning bolts" in these dendrites -- was tied to the strengthening or weakening of connections between neurons, hallmarks of learning new information. 

There was an article on the ABC site this morning which gave us this alarming headline “Pesticide banned worldwide still used to grow 70pc of Australian strawberries”.

Shocking!

Except, well, there were a few teeny tiny but important details missing. Like the fact that the rest of the world is still using the “banned” pesticide too.

Intermittent fasting (also called alternate day fasting) has become a popular diet.

In most versions of intermittent fasting, people fast or eat very little a few days each week and then eat normal amounts during the remaining days.

Fasting is something that human beings have practiced throughout history, often out of circumstance rather than choice. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors were probably expert fasters, indulging in feasts in times of plenty, and then facing long periods of scarcity in between. With this in mind, it makes sense that our bodies' cells could perform well under the harsh conditions of feast and famine.

By Ben Stein, Inside Science - Testing whether a drug is safe and effective usually takes many years and millions of dollars. Now, researchers have discovered a surprisingly simple method that could quickly and inexpensively weed out many toxic drugs early in the testing process. The test simply explores how much a drug alters a cell's outer covering, or membrane.

It's no surprise to most that Germanwings Flight 9525 co-pilot Andreas Lubitz, who crashed the plane into a mountain, killing all of the passengers and crew, had been treated for suicidal tendencies. 

If you want to be sure you, or your child, is optimizing the chances for safety while playing hockey, one helmet stands alone.

The Department of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanics at Virginia Tech bought 32 helmets and tested each helmet in four directions at three energy levels twice -- a total 48 tests per model. The entire evaluation process included more than 2,000 impact tests done both on an ice rink and inside a laboratory at the Institute of Critical Technology and Applied Science at Virginia Tech.

It's not always about burning calories after the fact, sometimes it is better for overall health to plan before that high fat meal.

The health benefits of the Mediterranean diet are well-known. As well as being healthier, a recent article concludes that the menu traditionally eaten in Spain leaves less of a carbon footprint than that of the US or the United Kingdom.

The consequences of climate change range from species extinction to sea-level increases and the spread of diseases. For this reason, researchers have been struggling for years to alleviate its effects, even limiting the pollution caused by food consumption.