A new study published in the British Journal of Psychiatry says that women who smoke are at greater risk of developing major depressive disorder. Australian researchers from the University of Melbourne and Geelng's Barwon Health assessed a group of 1043 Australian women, whose health had been monitored for a decade as part of the Geelong Osteoporosis Study.

On their ten year follow up participants were given an additional test of a psychiatric assessment.

Results revealed that women with depression were more likely to have been smokers than those without depression. Compared with non-smokers, the likelihood for developing depression more than doubled for heavy smokers (those who smoked more than 20 cigarettes a day).

Wind farms pose less of a threat to farmland birds than previously feared, new research has found. The study, published this week in the British Ecological Society's Journal of Applied Ecology, helps resolve a potentially major environmental conflict: how to meet renewable energy targets at the same time as reversing dramatic declines in biodiversity on European farmland.

Dr Mark Whittingham and colleagues from Newcastle University conducted bird surveys on arable farmland around two wind farms in the East Anglian fens. They recorded almost 3,000 birds from 23 different species, including five red-listed species of high conservation concern – the yellowhammer, the Eurasian tree sparrow, the corn bunting, Eurasian skylark and the common reed bunting.

I am obsessed with CSI (excluding CSI Miami, David Caruso is just too smarmy). I simply can’t help it. I will watch an episode of CSI that I have already seen twice, just for the thrill of seeing the cases unfold. I even downloaded the entire first season of CSI and watched every single episode, back to back, without sleeping. I know that I am not alone. Shows like CSI have swept the nation due partly to its drama, but also to its science. The fact that a single hair, nail or swath of skin could yield a lead on a case is captivating. It is also true.

Granted shows like CSI sensationalize the lab work and results yielded by forensic science, but its basis is accurate. DNA profiling is one of the most valuable tools used by law enforcement and in fact does help to solve cases.

Remember that old expression about your fence, "the grass is always greener on the other side?" Although this may not be entirely true, a recent study shows that a daily dose of the green stuff may actually prove beneficial to both your mental and physical health. 

Students attending college in San Marcos, Texas are taking advantage of their luscious green surroundings and are feeling quite good about it.

A.L. McFarland, a graduate student at Texas State University's Department of Agriculture, is head of a new "green" study which created data on the effects of outdoor interaction on a student's overall quality of life.

A link between reduced levels of the 'stress hormone' cortisol and antisocial behaviour in male adolescents has been discovered by a research team at the University of Cambridge.

Levels of cortisol in the body usually increase when people undergo a stressful experience, such as public speaking, sitting an exam, or having surgery. It enhances memory formation and is thought to make people behave more cautiously and to help them regulate their emotions, particularly their temper and violent impulses.

The new research, funded by the Wellcome Trust, shows that adolescents with severe antisocial behaviour do not exhibit the same increase in cortisol levels when under stress as those without antisocial behaviour.

It's not what you take but the way that you take it that can produce different results in women who take hormone replacement therapy (HRT), according to new research on the association between HRT and heart attacks, published the European Heart Journal [1] today.

The study is the largest to look at the effects of HRT since the Women's Health Initiative trial was stopped early after finding that HRT increased the risk of women developing a range of conditions including breast cancer and thromboembolism.

The research is an observational study of 698,098 healthy Danish women, aged 51-69, who were followed between 1995-2001. It has found that overall there was no increased risk of heart attacks in current users of HRT compared to women who had never taken it.

Researchers have identified two new genes – and confirmed the role of a third gene – associated with increased risk of higher levels of uric acid in the blood, which can lead to gout, a common, painful form of arthritis. Combined, the three genetic variations were associated with up to a 40-fold increased risk in developing gout. The findings suggest that genetic testing could one day be used to identify individuals at risk for gout before symptoms develop, as well as determine who might benefit from medications to prevent the development of gout.

The genes were identified using data from two large genome-wide association studies – genetic variations of nearly 7,700 participants from NHLBI's Framingham Heart Study SHARe (SNP Health Association Resource) and more than 4,100 participants in NWO's Rotterdam Study. Researchers then replicated their finding using data from nearly 14,900 participants in NHLBI's Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study (ARIC).

There's a lot of truth in the old proverb "experience is the best teacher," and apparently it even applies to 10-month-old infants.

Researchers have found that infants who had an opportunity to use a plastic cane to get an out-of-reach toy were better able to understand the goal of another person's use of a similar tool than were infants who had previously only watched an adult use a cane to retrieve a toy.