Male doctors have nearly a 250 percent greater chance of having medico-legal action taken against them than their female counterparts.

Since the chickenpox vaccine became available in the U.S. in 1995, there has been a large reduction in chickenpox cases. Hospitalizations and outpatient visits for chickenpox have continued their decline after a second dose of the vaccine was recommended to improve protection against the disease, according to a new study.

In another reversal of claims that saturated fats were killing people and their replacement, trans fats, were healthier, another study has found that saturated fats are not associated with an increased risk of death, heart disease, stroke, or type 2 diabetes. Instead, trans fats are associated with greater risk of death and coronary heart disease. This is a dramatic change and vindicates organizations like the American Council on Science and Health, which had stated decades ago that saturated fats in moderation were not harmful and that groups that scare the public to raise money were simply exaggerating flawed animal studies to worry people.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott has effectively ended any chance of same-sex marriage in this term of parliament. Public opinion in Australia is in clear support of same-sex marriage. So how have opponents had so much success in blocking change?

Prominent arguments against same-sex marriage have been based on history, tradition, human rights, and social scientific research into health and welfare. The role of religion in opposition has been less explicit.

Religion, history and tradition

The consistency of the whole appearance rather than the attractiveness of the parts is not just  saying, it's science, according to a study where participants were shown schematic point-light displays that depict a person using 15 moving dots.

The representation conveyed both the individual characteristics of a person's movements and their individual body shape. 

The team isolated these two areas and separately measured the attractiveness of individual movement styles as well as individual body shapes based on ratings obtained from his research participants. The researchers then combined the movement style of one person with the body shapes of another person and collected attractiveness ratings from these "hybrid walkers".

Today, many wealthy countries are able to mitigate, to some degree, their risk of delta flooding through vulnerability-reducing investments, but a new model suggests that this mitigation may not be sustainable in the long-term.

Ultimately, wealthy countries could be feeling the strain of floods to a similar degree as developing countries.