It's winter in the northern hemisphere and that means flu season. 

As influenza spreads through the northern hemisphere winter, researchers in the laboratory of Professor Jose Villadangos at the University of Melbourne believe they have a new clue to why some people fight infections better than others.

The lab has been investigating the 'defensive devices' contained within the T- cells that are located on exposed body surfaces such as skin and mucosal surfaces to ward off infection. T-cells detect cells infected with viruses and kill them before the virus can reproduce within the infected cell and spread to other cells.

You may not ever carve out time to go to the gym but a new review by social psychologists suggests the health benefits of small amounts of activity in two-minute increments that add up to 30 minutes per day can be just as beneficial as longer bouts of physical exercise achieved by a trip to the gym.

Even cutting your own vegetables rather than buying them pre-cut counts.

The analysis of over 6,000 American adults found that an active lifestyle approach seemed to be as beneficial as structured exercise in improving health outcomes, including preventing metabolic syndrome, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol.

Sexual selection refers to the evolutionary pressures that relate to a species' ability to repel rivals, gather mates and pass on genes. We can observe those processes happening in living animals and, now, detecting sexual selection in the fossil record is also possible, according to researchers. 

It has been challenging to recognize sexual selection in extinct animals. Many fossil animals have elaborate crests, horns, frills and other structures that look like they were used in sexual display but it can be difficult to distinguish these structures from those that might play a role in feeding behavior, escaping predators, controlling body temperature or not having any important function at all.

While male sparrows can fight to the death, a new study shows that they often wave their wings wildly first in an attempt to avoid a dangerous brawl.  Swamp sparrows use wing waves as an aggressive signal to defend their territories and mates from intruding males. 

"For birds, wing waves are like flipping the bird or saying 'put up your dukes. I'm ready to fight,' " said Duke biologist Rindy Anderson.

Regular consumption of deep-fried foods like chicken, french fries and doughnuts has been associated with an increased risk of prostate cancer by investigators at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

Previous studies have suggested that eating foods made with high-heat cooking methods, like grilled meat, may increase the risk of prostate cancer but this is the first one to implicate deep frying to cancer.

Sick children suffering dehydration from flu or other illnesses may risk significant kidney injury if given drugs such as ibuprofen and naproxen, according to researchers writing in the Journal of Pediatrics.

Jason Misurac, M.D., and colleagues from
Indiana University School of Medicine
and Butler University reported that nearly 3 percent of cases of pediatric acute kidney injury over a decade could be traced directly to having taken the common non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, or NSAIDs. Although small in terms of percentage of total kidney damage cases, they noted that the children with problems associated with NSAIDs included four young patients who needed dialysis, and at least seven who may have suffered permanent kidney damage.