The results of a small clinical trial intervention found that mindfulness-based meditation could lessen some symptoms associated with cancer in teens.

Mindfulness-based meditation sounds fuzzy, because it claims to focus on the 'present moment' and the connection between the mind and body.  But whatever works, works.

Adolescents living with cancer face not only the physical symptoms of their condition, but also the anxiety and uncertainty related to the progression of the disease, the anticipation of physical and emotional pain related to illness and treatment, the significant changes implied in living with cancer, as well as the fear of recurrence after remission. 

An analysis of 100 million US medical records published in PLOS Computational Biology concludes that autism rates are correlated (at the county level) with incidence of genital malformations in newborn males - and the authors say that may be due to harmful environmental factors such as pesticides. They even say that more regulations can fix it.

The authors found that after adjusting for gender, ethnic, socioeconomic and geopolitical factors, autism rates jumped by 283 percent for every one percent increase in frequency of malformations in a county. Intellectual disability rates increase 94 percent. Slight increases in autism and ID rates are also seen in wealthier and more urban counties.

Populations of endangered salmonids are supported by releasing large quantities of hatchery-reared fish, but the fisheries' catches have continued to decrease. Earlier research has shown that certain behavioural traits explain individual differences in how fish survive in the wild. A new Finnish study conducted on brown trout now shows that there are predictable individual differences in behavioural traits, like activity, tendency to explore new surroundings and stress tolerance. Furthermore, certain individual differences were observed to contain heritable components.

Mutations within the gene FTO have been implicated as a genetic determinant of obesity risk in humans, but the mechanism for any link remains unknown.

A new paper says that the obesity-associated elements within FTO interact with IRX3, a distant gene on the genome that appears to be the functional obesity gene. The FTO gene itself appears to have only a peripheral effect on obesity. 

Vibrations in chemical bonds can be used to predict chemical reactions. That means chemists could design better catalysts to speed reactions that make medicines, industrial products and new materials.

While there's no genetic basis for anorexia nervosa, psychiatrists say there may be a chemical treatment - oxytocin, the 'love hormone'.  

Robin Thicke may have sung "Blurred Lines" and appeared in a teenage fantasy video with a lot of naked women, but when a photo was revealed of him in a suggestive situation with another woman, he found that the line was actually not all that blurry to his wife.(1)

What changed? She had been fine with his canoodling before. He has no idea and men meeting women across the nation are just as confused about where their blurred lines are. 

A 70 million year old fossil found in the Late Cretaceous sediments of Alaska reveals a new small tyrannosaur named Nanuqsaurus hoglundi.