If you are not a person who handles stress well, you are unlikely to enter a high-risk, high-reward field like sales, instead something calmer will be more suitable, even if the pay is much lower. Making less money did not cause your stress level, stress caused you to make less money, according to a new paper by scholars at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne.

On a biological level, they associated the effects of stress with the release of the hormone cortisol in the Psychoneuroendocrinology paper. 

Human papillomaviruses (HPV) infect epithelial cells in the skin and mucosal tissue and can cause tumor-like growth. Some of these viruses also develop malignant tumors, especially cervical cancer in women, which kills around 4,000 women each year.

It's about sustenance, not pleasure. Penguins can't enjoy or even detect the savory taste of the fish they eat or the sweet taste of fruit. A new analysis of the genetic evidence reported in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on February 16 suggests that the flightless, waddling birds have lost three of the five basic tastes over evolutionary time. For them, it appears, food comes in only two flavors: salty and sour.

Many other birds, such as chickens and finches, can't taste sweet things either. But they do have receptors for detecting bitter and umami (or meaty) flavors.

Gentoo penguin. Credit: Jianzhi 'George' Zhang

Napping beyond the age of 2 is linked to poorer sleep quality in young children, although the impact on behavior and development is less clear-cut, according to a review in Archives of Disease in Childhood. The total length and quality of sleep over a 24 hour period is linked to child health and development, and parents and carers have been encouraged to let toddlers take a daytime nap as a way of promoting good health. By the time a child is 2, s/he is generally getting most of his/her sleep at night.

The researchers wanted to find out what impact napping has on young children's night-time sleep quality, behavior, cognition and physical health.

About 8 million tons of plastic waste wound up in the world's oceans in 2010, and researchers warn that the cumulative amount could increase more than tenfold in the next decade unless the international community improves its waste management practices.

Jenna Jambeck from the University of Georgia in Athens, GA, along with colleagues from the United States and Australia, studied the sources of ocean-bound plastic around the world and developed models to estimate their annual contributions. They suggest that coastal countries generated close to 275 million tons of plastic waste in 2010--and that 4.8 to 12.7 million tons of that plastic made its way to the oceans.

A new study has found that giving acetate supplements sped up the growth and metastasis of tumors in mice.

Acetate is a major compound produced in the gut by host bacteria, which can have beneficial and also potentially harmful effects on human health. Further studies are needed to determine whether restricting acetate production by gut bacteria will affect growth of tumors.