In one of the largest, most representative health surveys conducted to date, lesbian, gay and bisexual adults reported substantially higher rates of severe psychological distress, heavy drinking and smoking, and impaired physical health than did heterosexuals.

The National Health Interview Survey, one of the nation's leading health surveys, collected responses from approximately 68,000 adults. The results were reported today in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine by researchers at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and University of Minnesota School of Public Health.

Exercise boosts kids' and young people's brain power and academic prowess, says a consensus statement on physical activity in schools and during leisure time, published online in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

Time taken away from lessons for physical activity is time well spent and does not come at the cost of getting good grades, say the 24 signatories to the statement.

The Statement, which distils the best available evidence on the impact of physical activity on children and young people, was drawn up by a panel of international experts with a wide range of specialisms, from the UK, Scandinavia, and North America, in Copenhagen, Denmark, in April of this year.

European countries should not adopt Australia's immigration system, with its emphasis on deterrence, warn ethicists in a special issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics, dedicated to global medical ethics.

The system's lack of transparency is helping perpetuate ongoing human rights abuses and what amounts to the torture of asylum seekers in remote offshore detention centres, they argue.

Furthermore, the introduction of the Border Force Act, which entered the statute book in July 2015, makes speaking up about abuse by current or former 'trusted persons' including health professionals, a criminal offence, punishable by a two year prison sentence.

Solar material twists above the sun's surface in this close-up captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory on June 7-8, 2016, showcasing the turbulence caused by combative magnetic forces on the sun. This spinning cloud of solar material is part of a dark filament angling down from the upper left of the frame. Filaments are long, unstable clouds of solar material suspended above the sun's surface by magnetic forces. SDO captured this video in wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet light, which is typically invisible to our eyes, but is colorized here in red for easy viewing.

A team of investigators from Brigham and Women's Hospital and the University of Massachusetts have developed a suite of computer algorithms that can accurately predict the behavior of the microbiome - the vast collection of microbes living on and inside the human body. In a paper published in Genome Biology, the authors show how their algorithms can be applied to develop new treatments for serious diarrheal infections, including Clostridium difficile, and inflammatory bowel disease. The team also shows how to identify bacteria most crucial for a healthy and stable microbial community, which could inform the development of probiotics and other therapies.

Disrupted fetal immune system development, such as that caused by viral infection in the mother, may be a key factor in the later appearance of certain neurodevelopmental disorders. This finding emerges from a Weizmann Institute study published in Science on June 23, 2016.