Acoustic disturbance has different effects on different species of fish, according to a new study which tested fish anti-predator behaviour. 

Three-spined sticklebacks responded sooner to a flying seagull predator model when exposed to additional noise, whereas no effects were observed in European minnows.

Lead author Dr. Irene Voellmy of Bristol's School of Biological Sciences said, "Noise levels in many aquatic environments have increased substantially during the last few decades, often due to increased shipping traffic. Potential impacts of noise on aquatic ecosystems are therefore of growing concern."

The pesticide methoxychlor has been linked to adult onset kidney disease, ovarian disease and obesity - generations after rats were exposed.  

Methoxychlor, also known as Chemform, Methoxo, Metox or Moxie, was invented in 1948 and became popular in the 1970s after DDT was banned. It was used on crops, ornamental plants, livestock and pets. It is still used in many countries around the world it was banned in the U.S. in 2003 due to concerns about toxicity and disruption of endocrine systems. Methoxychlor was found to behave like the hormone estrogen and affect the reproductive system.

There's a concern that global warming may push Earth's climate system past a "tipping point," where rapid melting of ice and further warming may become irreversible. It's a hotly debated conjecture because there is no picture of what this point of no return may look like.

To try and find some answers about the future, researchers have probed the geologic past and drawn some conclusions about mechanisms of abrupt climate change. The study pinpoints the emergence of synchronized climate variability in the North Pacific Ocean and the North Atlantic Ocean a few hundred years before the rapid warming that took place at the end of the last ice age about 15,000 years ago.

It's no surprise when obese preschoolers have obese parents. It's actually expected. So it's not a surprise when obesity treatment is more effective when it targets both parent and child compared to when only the child is targeted.

Children enrolled in this study were overweight or obese and had one parent who participated in the study who also was overweight or obese, according to body mass index (BMI) measurements, calculated based on height and weight.

For two decades, women at risk of developing placental blood clots have been prescribed the anticoagulant low molecular weight heparin (LMWH) but it's ineffective, according to a clinical trial published today in The Lancet.

As many as one in 10 pregnant women have a tendency to develop  thrombophilia
- blood clots in their vein. These women have been injected with LMWH daily, which means hundreds of needles over the course of their pregnancy. 

In 2012, scientists involved in the ENCODE (Encyclopedia of DNA Elements) project stated that 80% of our genome is functional - that it has some biochemical function. 

The finding was controversial, with critics arguing that the biochemical definition of 'function' was too broad - just because an activity on DNA occurs, it does not necessarily have a consequence. For functionality, you need to demonstrate that an activity matters.