Privacy discussions of modern times have four pillars - and they are all weak, according to a new article.

There are four main arguments about privacy: (1) it is dead; (2) people don't care about privacy and modern youth care even less; people with nothing to hide have nothing to fear; and privacy is bad for business.

A paper in Zootaxa describes a new species of spider, Cebrennus rechenbergi, the only spider that is able to move by means of flic-flac jumps. 

The nocturnal spider Cebrennus rechenbergi lives in the sand desert Erg Chebbi in southeastern Morocco, not far from the Algerian border.

Smallpox as a disease is dead and has been since 1980. Should we let the virus behind it die?

Variola, the virus that causes smallpox, is on the agenda of the upcoming meeting of the World Health Assembly (WHA), the governing body of the World Health Organization, which is part of the United Nations.

The UN would like to destroy the last known remaining live strains of the virus  but an international group of scientists led by Inger Damon, from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, argue that the WHA should not choose destruction, because crucial scientific questions remain unanswered and important public health goals unmet. 

Corn yields in the central United States have increased dramatically in the last few decades - but they have also become more sensitive to drought conditions.

A clinical trial involving 14 sites provides new evidence on a growing controversy in the medical community – whether treating infants with steroids to augment surgery improves outcomes. 

A presentation at the annual meeting of the Pediatric Academic Societies in Vancouver discussed the risk of nutritional deficiencies in severely obese teens – including in those who had weight loss surgery.

At least five years after undergoing gastric bypass surgery, teens and young adults maintained significant weight loss but were at risk of nutritional deficiencies, particularly low iron, mild anemia and low vitamin D. The study also found low iron and low vitamin D in severely obese teens who did not undergo weight loss surgery. Those who didn't have surgery also had low levels of protein in their blood.