U.S. mothers who have unintended pregnancies return to work sooner than mothers who had planned pregnancies, and that is a reason to mandate contraception at every institution, says Dr. Rada K. Dagher, assistant professor of health services administration in the University of Maryland School of Public Health. 

"We know that it's better for women to take time off after childbirth to take care of their physical and mental health," says Dagher, who has also written that taking six months of maternity leave is optimal for reducing a woman's risk of postpartum depression. "Returning to work soon after childbirth may not be good for these women or for their children." 

The pioneering health insurance exchange in Massachusetts -
the model for President Barack Obama’s health care law
- is headed for the scrap heap. The state wants to merge it with the federal HealthCare.gov enrollment site because it is so dysfunctional.

With terrible timing, Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) scholars say it is working really well and credit it with 2.9% decreased mortality compared to other states. They estimate that the Massachusetts' health reform law has prevented approximately 320 deaths per year—one life saved for each 830 people gaining insurance - and use it as evidence that government health care expansion will save lives.

If you are obese when you are young, it's likely to get worse when you are older.

A recent paper examined the relationship between BMI at age 25, obesity later in life, and biological indicators of health and found that people who were obese by age 25 had a higher chance of more severe obesity later in life, but that current weight, rather than the duration of obesity, was a better indicator of cardiovascular and metabolic risk.  

Cigarette smoking, overuse of screen media and even poor diet have been significantly associated with weekly consumption of sports drinks and energy drinks by adolescents. 

Data for the study were gathered from 20 public middle schools and high schools in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area of Minnesota as part of the population-based study, Eating and Activity in Teens (EAT 2010). Surveys and anthropometric measures were completed by 2,793 adolescents during the 2009–2010 school year.

Mean age of the participants was 14.4 years, participants were equally divided by gender, and 81 percent identified as a racial/ethnic background other than non-Hispanic white.

An international team of researchers has, for the first time, identified an avian influenza virus in a group of Adélie penguins from Antarctica. The virus, found to be unlike any other circulating avian flu, is described in a study published this week in mBio®, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology.

While other research groups have taken blood samples from penguins before and detected influenza antibodies, no one had detected actual live influenza virus in penguins or other birds in Antarctica previously, says study author and Associate Professor Aeron Hurt, PhD, a senior research scientist at the WHO Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza in Melbourne, Australia.

How can science help save the wild finches Darwin made famous in the Galapagos Islands from invasive species?

By leaving cotton balls treated with a mild pesticide laying around. In an experiment, the wild finches used the cotton to help build their nests, which killed parasitic fly maggots and protected baby birds.

Self-fumigation works.

"We are trying to help birds help themselves," says biology professor Dale Clayton, senior author of a study outlining the new technique in Current Biology.