Just 20 percent of UK people with hearing problems actually wear a hearing aid, according to a new analysis in the journal Ear and Hearing which looked at the habits of 160,000 aged 40 to 69 years.

The results showed that 10.7 per cent of adults had significant hearing problems when listening to speech in the presence of background noise but only 2.1 per cent used a hearing aid.  One in 10 middle aged adults had substantial hearing problems and were more likely to be from a working class or ethnic minority background.

Fuel produced from various animal fats is similar to biodiesel manufactured using ethanol from corn. But if the price of animal fat rose sharply, no one would really notice, since no one really eats animal fat.

And it isn't just limited to chicken, pork or beef fat , they can use alligator too. Why would they do that? Science! The report at the latest meeting of the American Chemical Society follows up on an earlier study on the potential use of gator fat as a source of biodiesel fuel. It's cool research, but there is obviously a limited amount of alligator fat lying around.

Exposure to media that promotes conspiracy theories may increase belief in them, but exposure to debunking information can decrease that belief, a new study has found.

The report, published in the January-March edition of the journal Communication Quarterly and conducted by researchers at the University of Missouri and Indiana University-Purdue University Columbus, suggests that messages can influence peoples' beliefs, even in a fragmented media world.

An international collaboration recently analyzed existing cohort studies and randomized trials on coronary risk and fatty acid intake and drew a conclusion that will surprise you if you only get your science and health news from mainstream newspapers or television -  the evidence to support restricting the consumption of saturated fats in order to prevent heart disease isn't there.

And consumption of polyunsaturated fats is probably not a bad idea but there is insufficient evidence for guidelines which advocate the high consumption of polyunsaturated fats (such as omega 3 and omega 6) to reduce the risk of coronary disease. 

Even after over 1,500 years frozen in Antarctic ice, moss can come back to life and continue to grow.

Writing in Current Biology, the team report that they observed moss regeneration after at least 1,530 years frozen in permafrost.  For the first time, this vital part of the ecosystem in both polar regions has been shown to have the ability to survive century to millennial scale ice ages and it is the first study to show such long-term survival in any plant; similar timescales have only been seen before in bacteria. Mosses are known to survive environmental extremes in the short-term with previous evidence confirming up to a 20 year timescale for survival. 

Please observe the following unusual locomotive behavior which begins at around 55 seconds into this video – when Groucho Marx starts to run.

Groucho is displaying a behaviour which scientists now call ‘Groucho Running’ *see note.