In determining the gender of offspring, fathers may be getting shortchanged.

Because mothers can influence their offspring in a number of ways, from copulation to birth, while fathers have control over sperm only, it has long been assumed mothers are more important. In mammals, it is also believed that offspring sex ratios can only be determined by the mother, since fathers have always been thought to inseminate an equal proportion of X and Y sperm, having a random effect on offspring sex that they could not shift from equality, or 50:50.

Brain-computer interfaces can replace bodily functions to a certain degree and now they can even compose music. At least in a sense.

Derived from an established brain-computer interface method which mainly serves to spell - more accurately - write, a team writing in PLOS One has shown how they developed a new application by which music can be composed just through the power of thought. All that is needed is a special cap which measures brain waves, composition software. Before you start to think you'll be the next Haydn, keep in mind it can't create musical knowledge.

Even small tumors can be aggressive, according to a study in patients with early stage breast cancer presented at the ESMO 2017 Congress in Madrid.  They found that nearly one in four small tumors were aggressive and patients benefited from chemotherapy. Aggressive tumors could be identified by a 70-gene signature.

The dominant Australian community would very much like to keep Indigenous communities from alcohol, but indigenous communities aren't having it. A giant black market has sprung up and such non-government alcohol sells for up to 1100 percent of the retail price.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention seem more scared than elated by United States smoking rates. They have migrated from a war on the world's top killer, smoking, to being in a war on a chemical, nicotine.

They needn't be concerned. Science and health have won, and it wasn't because of taxes on cigarettes or a cottage industry of anti-smoking ads built by a tobacco company settlement, it was because of peer pressure. In young people. As the American Council on Science and Health, a pro-science consumer advocacy group based in New York City, has said since the 1970s, smoking is a pediatric disease. In the past, 90 percent of smokers picked up the habit by age 18, making adolescence a critical time for smoking-prevention efforts.

Center for Science in the Public Interest, a litigation group that sues food companies, may be dusting off some of its old materials after new report which finds "good" cholesterol, also known as HDL, might not be as good as we think.

The new paper contradicts findings from the last 25 years that high levels of HDL in the blood are a good thing. They instead found that people with extremely high levels of good cholesterol have a higher mortality rate than people with normal levels. For men with extremely high levels, the mortality rate was 106 percent higher than for the normal group.