HOUSTON -- (Nov. 17, 2015) -- When it comes to needles and drawing blood, most patients agree that bigger is not better. But in the first study of its kind, Rice University bioengineers have found results from a single drop of blood are highly variable, and as many as six to nine drops must be combined to achieve consistent results.

The study, which appears online this week in the American Journal of Clinical Pathology, examines the variation between blood drops drawn from a single fingerprick. The results suggest that health care professionals must take care to avoid skewed results as they design new protocols and technologies that rely on fingerprick blood.

A group of researchers from Lomonosov Moscow State University in collaboration with Russian Science Foundation developed a unique method for the selective study of electron transport chain in living mitochondria by using nondestructive analysis. The study was published in Scientific Reports.

In a randomized clinical trial of more than 300 participants, researchers from Johns Hopkins and elsewhere have found that ranibizumab -- a drug most commonly used to treat retinal swelling in people with diabetes -- is an effective alternative to laser therapy for treating the most severe, potentially blinding form of diabetic retinal disease. Results of the government-sponsored study also show that the drug therapy carries fewer side effects than the currently used laser treatment.

Warning labels on medications about the dangers of driving don't stop people from getting behind the wheel, according to Dr Tanya Smyth, from the Queensland University of Technology   Centre for Accident Research&Road Safety.

Driving while affected by prescription and over-the-counter medications had the potential to be as dangerous as driving under the influence of illegal drugs. Medication warning labels and accompanying pharmacist advice were the primary method to control drug driving but required the user to self-assess their impairment.

Evolution had a few more drinks once again, according to a new paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences which wants to prompts a rethink of what it means to be an animal.

Jellyfish, those commonplace sea pests with stinging tentacles, have actually evolved over time into "really weird" microscopic organisms, made of only a few cells, that live inside other animals.

Genome sequencing confirms that myxozoans, a diverse group of microscopic parasites that infect invertebrate and vertebrate hosts, are actually are "highly reduced" cnidarians -- the phylum that includes jellyfish, corals and sea anemones.

If you're a man, how much you eat may have more to do with the gender of your dining companions than your appetite, according to a paper published in Evolutionary Psychological Science which claims that men will eat significantly more food in the company of women than they will with other men.