It's no secret that cigarettes and heavy drinking are linked, people who engage in risky behaviors tend to do so in multiple ways, but a link to e-cigarettes, which have no tobacco, is new. A paper in Addictive Behaviors also found that more women than men use e-cigarettes socially, like when drinking, opposite to patterns seen in regular cigarette smoking.

As I am spending my time these days selecting candidates for early-stage researcher positions in the EU network I am coordinating, I am reminded of my own experience as a participant to job interviews from the other side of the table. The text below tells the story of my interviews for a post-doctoral position in 1998. Enjoy! 

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A new systematic review and meta-analysis finds the overall rate of anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries among high school athletes is significantly higher among females than males - and soccer is the most injury-causing for women.  

Vitamin D is important for the absorption and metabolism of calcium, as well as for maintaining healthy bones and muscles.  It's important but different parts of America have varying levels of it, and that is the main source, so we fortify products like milk with it.

In Denmark, the sun is absent for much of the year so people generally have too low a level, but are consumers actually interested in buying foods with added vitamin D?

Ivermectin, a workhorse of a drug that a few weeks ago earned its developers a Nobel prize for its success in treating multiple tropical diseases, is showing early promise as a novel and desperately needed tool for interrupting malaria transmission, according to new findings presented today at the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH) Annual Meeting.

Only 2 percent of Internet pages with information on firearm storage correctly identified all four practices that encompass safe gun storage.

In frontier days, gun safety was a given but in the modern era most kids don't grow up around guns - and movies contain a lot of gun violence without any real exposure to the consequences so children unfamiliar with firearms may regard them as toys or not realize that are loaded.

A team of researchers have built the world's first sonic tractor beam that can lift and move objects using sound waves. Tractor beams can grab and lift objects, a concept that has been used by science-fiction writers and has since fascinated scientists and engineers.

Researchers have now built a working tractor beam that uses high-amplitude sound waves to generate an acoustic hologram which can pick up and move small objects. 

Alcohol and nicotine use have long been known to go hand in hand but other than a commonality in reckless behavior, the reasons why have been speculation.  

Previous surveys have shown that more than 85 percent of U.S. adults who are alcoholics also smoke cigarettes. Now, researchers from the University of Missouri School of Medicine have found that nicotine cancels out the sleep-inducing effects of alcohol, which they believe sheds light on the reason alcohol and nicotine usage are so closely linked.

During the most recent study, rats were fitted with sleep-recording electrodes and given alcohol and nicotine. The researchers found that nicotine acts via the basal forebrain to suppress the sleep-inducing effects of alcohol.

Autism is a group of complex brain developmental disorders characterized by impairments in social interaction, communication, and stereotypical and repetitive behaviors. The diagnosed incidence is estimated to be one in 68 children and effective interventions remain limited.

Behavioral therapies can improve social, emotional and behavioral impairments but these are typically time consuming (40 hours per week), remain costly and show mixed outcomes. There is currently no medical treatment for these problems.

A five week treatment with the synthetic hormone oxytocin significantly improved social, emotional and behavioral issues among young children with autism, according to a recent study.