Daily consumption of added sugars in the U.S. averages 3.2 ounces (15.8 percent of daily caloric intake) and has increased substantially since 1977-1978, when added sugars contributed only 10.6 percent of the calories consumed by adults, according to a new study in JAMA.

The study also points out that consuming higher amounts of added sugars is associated with lower levels of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol and higher levels of triglycerides, which are important risk factors for cardiovascular disease.

Listening to your iPod or mp3 player for several hours at a time could put your hearing at risk, according to the least fun science article ever written.

The editorial, published today in the British Medical Journal, points out that personal music devices such as MP3 players can generate levels of sound at the ear in excess of 120 decibels, similar in intensity to a jet engine, especially when used with earphones that insert into the ear canal.

More than 90%  of teenagers from Europe and the United States surveyed use the newfangled  contraptions. Overall, their use "has grown faster than our ability to assess their potential health consequences," says Peter Rabinowitz from Yale University School of Medicine.

In the last two decades there has been a dramatic rise in the use of psychotropic medications to treat children. One in every fifty Americans is now considered permanently disabled by mental illness, and up to eight million children take one or more psychotropic drugs.

But there is little evidence available to warrant the widespread use of psychotropic drugs for children, and little long term data regarding its long term impact on development. The authors of a new study in the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy say the mental health field is currently designed to treat adults with psychotropic medications, but they are often misused in the case of children and adolescents.

The authors of a new study in Nature Methods say they have discovered 2,363 new DNA sequences corresponding to 730 regions on the human genome not charted in the reference map of the human genome.

"A large portion of those sequences are either missing, fragmented or misaligned when compared to results from next-generation sequencing genome assemblies on the same samples," said Dr. Evan Eichler, senior author of the study. "These findings suggest that new genome assemblies based solely on next-generation sequencing might miss many of these sites."

It's well known that serious air pollution can cause of all kinds of nasty health problems - headaches, nausea, allergic reactions, chronic respiratory disease, lung cancer and heart disease counted among them. But according to new statistical correlation, it can also make unborn children stupid at small levels. 

In a study study likely to increase travelers' trust in the TSA, Duke university researchers say identifying a prohibited item such as a water bottle may keep airport security from detecting harder-to-spot items in the same scan.

In the new study, published online in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, researchers asked college students to identify specific targets on a computer display – in this case, two perpendicular lines that form the letter "T" amid distracters, such as Ls and non-Ts. In some cases, Ts were easy to spot, and in other cases more difficult because they blended in with the background.