Want to hyphenate your last name to include your wife's? Is "Three Men and a Baby" your favorite movie? If you are a man, these and other distinguishing characteristics probably mean you have lower testosterone.

Childhood cancer survivors are at heightened risk of a wide range of autoimmune diseases, reveals research published online in the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases.

Diabetes and Addison's disease--a condition in which the adrenal gland doesn't work properly--make up almost half of the excess cases, the findings show.

Over the past 40 years, the number of childhood cancer survivors has risen sharply, resulting in a five year survival rate of 80% among children who succumb to the disease.

But mounting evidence suggests that these survivors are at heightened risk of various health problems as adults, which increase in number and severity as they get older.

Intensive farming practices such as larger herd size, maize growth, fewer hedgerows and the use of silage have been linked to higher risk of bovine TB, new research has concluded.

A study by the University of Exeter, funded by BBSRC and published in the Royal Society journal Biological Letters, analysed data from 503 farms which have suffered a TB breakdown alongside 808 control farms in areas of high TB risk.

In 2006, a tiny percentage of astronomers took it upon themselves to change the definition of "planet" and so Pluto was out. Chaos ruled, the 237 astronomers who made the ruling dug in their heels, and for the most part they were ignored.

After all, there are now nearly 5,000 planetary bodies orbiting stars other than ours. But astronomers don't know what exactly we should call them. Today at an American Astronomical Society meeting, UCLA professor Jean-Luc Margot described a simple test that can be used to clearly separate planets from other bodies like dwarf planets and minor planets and replace the  "definitional limbo" those bodies are in. 

Think of how often sit with your phone, tablet, or computer, quietly shopping or reading the latest headlines. Browsing the internet certainly feels like a solitary activity, but as a new paper reveals, you may be surprised by just how many companies are observing.

Tim Libert, a doctoral student at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania analyzed the Alexa top one million websites, finding that 88 percent leak user data to third parties -- sites that would be unfamiliar to most users.

"There's some suggestion that it's anonymous data," says Libert, "but when you have big data sets that can be combined with other big data sets, you can be identified pretty easily."

A new cholesterol-lowering vaccine leads to reductions in 'bad' LDL cholesterol in mice and macaques, according to research published in Vaccine. The authors of the study say the vaccine has the potential to be a more powerful treatment than statins alone.

The body produces cholesterol to make vitamin D, some hormones and some of the molecules that help us digest food. Cholesterol is also found in foods. LDL cholesterol is a fat-like substance that circulates in the blood; if there is too much cholesterol, the arteries can become blocked, leading to heart disease and stroke.