T. rex is considered the most ferocious creature in the prehistoric jungle, but mammal-like reptiles outlived the scary beast - and a new study shows it may have been due to something as simple as growing hair.

Dr. Julien Benoit and his colleagues from the University of the Witwatersrand scanned the fossil remains of mammal-like reptiles from the Karoo of South Africa found that these reptiles, called therapsids, may have evolved the use of whiskers as a sensory tool in order to operate at night well before the Mesozoic age, when dinosaurs became the dominant terrestrial animals.

Women workers often rely on future spouses to organize their retirement finances, rather than making independent decisions now. Men and women working for private Japanese companies make decisions about their retirement savings plans differently based on their gender.

Satoshi P. Watanabe, Ph.D., of Hiroshima University completed new research on an insurance company's survey results from 2002. Although the survey is somewhat dated, the data is still relevant because employee demographics have not changed significantly in the intervening 14 years. This is the first study to examine Japanese workers' gender-based decision making about retirement investments.

An international team of scientists has developed a relatively simple mathematical explanation for the rogue ocean waves that can develop seemingly out of nowhere to sink ships and overwhelm oil platforms with walls of water as much as 25 meters high.

The waves stem from a combination of constructive interference - a known phenomenon of colliding waves - and nonlinear effects specific to the complex dynamics of ocean waves. An improved understanding of how rogue waves originate could lead to improved techniques for identifying ocean areas likely to spawn them, allowing shipping companies to avoid dangerous seas.

SAN FRANCISCO - June 21, 2016 - A new study estimates that 9.6 million adults in the United States are highly myopic, or severely nearsighted. Of those, nearly 820,000 have a degenerative form of the disease and more than 41,000 suffer a complication called myopic choroidal neovascularization that could cause long-term vision loss, with women at higher risk. The findings are being published online today in Ophthalmology, the journal of the American Academy of Ophthalmology. This is the first large-scale study ever done to calculate the real-world prevalence of myopic choroidal neovascularization in the United States.

Having diabetes increases the risk of dying from the effects of a heart attack by around 50 per cent, according to a widespread study.

Researchers at the University of Leeds tracked 700,000 people who had been admitted to hospital with a heart attack between January 2003 and June 2013.

Of these, 121,000 had diabetes.

After stripping out the effects of age, sex, any other illnesses and differences in the emergency medical treatment received, the team found stark differences in survival rates.

People with diabetes were 56 per cent more likely to have died if they had experienced a ST elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) heart attack - in which the coronary artery is completely blocked - than those without the condition.

One of the alterations that most affects the quality of life of the elderly is muscle wastage and the resulting loss of strength, a condition known as sarcopenia. At about 55 years old, people begin to lose muscle mass, this loss continues into old age, at which point it becomes critical. The underlying causes of sarcopenia are unknown and thus no treatment is available for this condition. A study at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona) done in collaboration with the University of Barcelona (UB) and the CIBER's area of Diabetes and Associated Metabolic Diseases (CIBERDEM) has discovered that Mitofusin 2 is required to preserve healthy muscles in mice.