In epidemiology, matching curves are often enough to imply causation and so it is often done, even if there is no evidence to warrant the link.

There has been an increased use of antibiotics and there are an increased number of diagnoses so some epidemiologists looked at those two curves in the same direction and suggested one may be causing the other. A new analysis of about 500,000 children published in BMJ dismisses those claims and finds that exposure to antibiotics during pregnancy or early in life does not appear to increase the risk of asthma. 

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By Carsten Maple, University of Warwick

Portuguese researchers have developed a new method which uses images of a protein in cells to quantify its distribution (how much protein there is, and where it is in the cell) for that population of cells.

The discovery has important medical implications because the cellular location of a protein is directly linked to its function, as proved when the new algorithm identified mutations that had the potential to lead to >human diffuse gastric cancer(HDGC).

Credit: EU

By David Glance, University of Western Australia

The Parliament of the European Union last week voted to call on member states and the European Commission to investigate the operation of search engines in Europe to ensure “a balanced, fair and open Internet search structure”.

Imagine a car that can't get dirty or a business in Ferguson, Missouri that can't be graffiti'ed by unhinged protesters.

It might be possible with a new class of highly fluorinated super-repellent polymer called a “fluoropore”, which mimics the natural ability of lotus plants and cabbage leaves to make water droplets simply roll away - but for oils too. This lotus effect has been used for producing rough surfaces with special chemical properties. “However, this trick does not work for oils – the lotus plant repels water, but no oil,” says Dr.-Ing. Bastian Rapp of the KIT Institute of Microstructure Technology. “Oil-repellent surfaces need to have another chemical structure, fluoropolymers, for this purpose.” 

The Arctic Ocean sea ice cover emerged 2.6 million years ago - and it hasn't changed since. Not in all of the recurring warming cycles we have had and not even in 2006, when pundits predicted it would be melted by 2014.

It wasn't always that way. Between 4 and 5 million years ago, the extent of sea ice cover in Arctic was much less than it is today. Recent IPCC reports believe that the expanse of the Arctic ice cover has been quickly shrinking since the 1970s and that 2012 was the known sea ice minimum in that time.

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By Roxanne Connelly, University of Edinburgh

A growing number of scholars are using social media data to write articles about both online and offline human behavior - it's cheap, it's as accurate as surveys if properly controlled, and no one ever has to leave the office.

But surveys are not science for an obvious reason and yet, in recent years, studies have claimed the ability to predict everything from summer blockbusters to fluctuations in the stock market. They all get mainstream media attention despite obvious evidence of flaws in many of these studies.