Researchers have found more than half of the public datasets provided with scientific papers are incomplete, which prevents reproducibility tests and follow-up studies.

However, slight improvements to research practices could make a big difference.

Lead researcher Dr Dominique Roche from The Australian National University (ANU) said many peer-reviewed biological journals now require authors to publicly archive their data when a paper is published.

This is professor Loeske Kruuk. Credit: Stuart Hay, ANU

A new study strengthens growing evidence that Mycoplasma genitalium (MG) is a sexually transmitted infection (STI). The findings are recently published in the International Journal of Epidemiology.

Analyses of over 4500 of urine samples from Britain's third National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (Natsal-3) showed that MG was prevalent in up to 1% of the general population aged 16-44, who had reported at least one sexual partner. Prevalence was much higher in those who had reported more than four sexual partners in the past year -- 5.2% in men and 3.1% in women. Absence of the infection in over 200 16-17 year olds who had not had vaginal, anal, or oral sex provided further evidence that MG is transmitted sexually.

Human remains dating back to the Late Upper Palaeolithic period over 13,000 years ago has revealed a previously unknown "fourth strand" of ancient European ancestry. 

This new lineage stems from populations of hunter-gatherers that split from western hunter-gatherers shortly after the 'out of Africa' expansion some 45,000 years ago and went on to settle in the Caucasus region, where southern Russia meets Georgia today.

Here these hunter-gatherers remained for millennia, isolated as the Ice Age culminated in the last 'Glacial Maximum' some 25,000 years ago. They weathered the cold in the relative shelter of the Caucasus mountains until eventual thawing allowed movement and brought them into contact with other populations, likely from further east. 

A recent paper examined the changing nature of family living situations. University of Melbourne
Associate Professor Cassandra Szoeke and Katherine Burn, from the University's Faculty of Medicine, Health and Dentistry Sciences, examined both 'boomerang kids' (those who return home) and 'failure to launch' kids (those who never left).

The project reviewed 20 studies involving 20 million people worldwide and was published in Maturitas.

The research shows:

• The shifting economic climate and changes in social norms were driving the phenomenon of kids staying at home for longer.

MINNEAPOLIS - Brain scans of people in a coma may help predict who will regain consciousness, according to a study published in the November 11, 2015, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The study looked at connections between areas of the brain that play a role in regulating consciousness.

It may seem like bees are suddenly all the rage in environmental fundraising campaigns today but they have been important to human culture - for almost as long as modern farming, humans have been interested in bees and the products they produce.