MADISON, Wis. -- A fruit called the noni -- now hyped for a vast array of unproven health benefits -- is distinctly unhealthy for the fruit fly, which has fascinated geneticists for a century. For the species of Drosophila that lives in labs around the world, noni signifies extermination with extreme prejudice: A fly will die if it eats yeast growing on noni.

And yet when collectors swung nets and baited traps with rotting banana on a small island between Madagascar and Africa, they found a close relative, Drosophila yakuba, that merrily gobbles yeast growing on these forbidden fruits.

New Haven, Conn. - Scientists have discovered an ancient animal that carried its young in capsules tethered to the parent's body like tiny, swirling kites. They're naming it after "The Kite Runner," the 2003 bestselling novel.

The miniscule creature, Aquilonifer spinosus, was an arthropod that lived about 430 million years ago. It grew to less than half an inch long, and there is only one known fossil of the animal, found in Herefordshire, England. Its name comes from "aquila," which means eagle or kite, and the suffix "fer," which means carry.

Boston, MA - Colonoscopies, mammograms, and childbirth services are the most searched-for medical services when it comes to cost information--and millennials with higher annual deductible spending are the most frequent comparison shoppers--according to an analysis of a large national health insurance plan database by researchers from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

The study appears in the April issue of Health Affairs.

Other top searched-for services in the study included MRIs, vasectomies, physician office visits, and other non-emergency services.

At a time when public health agencies and health care providers are striving to make health care and health policy decisions on the basis of evidence, it is important for patients and the public to engage with the production, consumption and evaluation of evidence too. But such engagement is challenging, write Hastings Center scholars in the April issue of Health Affairs, because "evidence alone is never definitive," People will prioritize different values, and weigh risks and benefits differently.

A new paper says that current practices for grouping and evaluating young dancers in ballet can be counterproductive, because it places late-maturing girls at a significant disadvantage during important phases of their development and at greater risk for injury.

The authors endorse an approach to training known as 'bio-banding', which groups individuals by their biological rather than chronological age and is popular in sports like football. 

The first major clinical trial to include a blinded, placebo-controlled "statin re-challenge" in patients with a history of muscle-related side effects sheds new light on statin-associated muscle symptoms, according to research presented at the American College of Cardiology's 65th Annual Scientific Session. The trial also demonstrates that monthly self-injection of the relatively new non-statin cholesterol-lowering drug evolocumab reduces levels of low-density lipoprotein, or LDL, cholesterol to a greater extent than ezetimibe, a traditional drug used in statin-intolerant patients.