The discovery of the first gene causing familial scoliosis was announced by an international France-Canada research team today. "Mystery surrounds the cause of scoliosis, which is a three dimensional deformation of the vertebral column. Many researchers have been attempting to uncover the origins of this disease, particularly from a genetic point of view," explained leading co-author Dr Florina Moldovan of the University of Montreal and the CHU Sainte Justine research hospital. "To date, many genes have been suspected of causing scoliosis amongst different populations, but the gene that causes the familial form of the disease remained unknown.

One saved the U.S. space program, another invented a better treatment for leprosy and a third spawned an industry in the American Midwest - but you have probably never heard of these female "legends of chemistry".

Their names are Mary Sherman Morgan, Alice Ball and Rachel Lloyd and they all had amazing accomplishments in chemistry, but their work was nearly lost to history.


Mary Sherman Morgan, Alice Ball and Rachel Lloyd. Credit: The American Chemical Society

This week ACS Reactions shines the spotlight on them so they can get some proper acclaim:

Public participation will have to be at the heart of big data projects in health care and biomedical research and a new report calls for greater transparency about how people's data are used.

The report warns that if people's preferences and values are not taken into account and are instead picked by government elites, projects that could deliver significant public good may continue to be challenged and fail to secure public confidence. Recent health data projects, such as care.data, 100K Genomes, UK Biobank and the Scottish Informatics Programme (SHIP) have each, in their own way, raised ethical questions surrounding the use of data.  The report recommends the introduction of criminal penalties for misuse of data. 

There’s no scientific definition of picky eating, but parents know it when they see it.  Sharon Donovan, a University of Illinois professor of nutrition, says that picky eaters do exhibit definable preferences and mealtime behaviors.

The analysis showed that kids deemed picky eaters by their parents did react differently to common foods and behaved differently at mealtime than kids whose parents said their kids weren’t choosy. The differences were significant and occurred across 16 assessed behaviors, according to Soo-Yeun Lee of the University of Illinois.

Teenagers who own smart phones spend more time online – including during the night, which may affect their sleep. A new University of Basel study on more than 300 students reports that teenagers' digital media use during the night is associated with an increased risk of sleep problems and depressive symptoms. 

Though they only became ubiquitous around 2007, most teenagers nowadays own smart phones. Due to wireless Internet connections and cheap data rates, teenagers with smart phones spend more time online and communicate with their peers for less money – for example via WhatsApp – which has changed their digital media use pattern profoundly. 

Women – and little girls even more so – are desperate to see images and stories that don’t actively oppress them onscreen, says Olivia Murphy. Image: Nadia Mel, CC BY-SA

By Olivia Murphy, University of Sydney

The warm ocean temperatures that brought an endangered green sea turtle to San Francisco in September have triggered a population explosion of bright pink, inch-long sea slugs in tide pools along California's central and northern coastline. The Hopkins' Rose nudibranch, while no strange sight in Southern California, is rarely spotted farther north. A team of scientists, including experts from the California Academy of Sciences, believes this far-flung Okenia rosacea bloom--along with a slew of other marine species spotted north of their typical ranges--may signal a much larger shift in ocean climate and a strong forthcoming El Niño.

The third chapter in the ongoing saga of the "first direct image of gravitational waves through the primordial sky" has been written. The first chapter was in March of last year when the BICEP2 team announced that it had observed the portion of cosmic background radiation (the "fossil radiation" from the Big Bang) generated by gravitational waves. This would have been the first observation of the cosmological effects of the elusive phenomenon predicted by Einstein's theory of General Relativity.