• For the first time – in Norway and internationally – researchers have looked at the direct correlation between brain size and cancer risk in adults.

  • Cleaning up or replacing coal-fired power plants that lack sulfur pollution controls could help Texans breathe cleaner, healthier air, according to researchers at Rice University.

  • Up to 13% of US beekeepers are in danger of losing their colonies due to pesticides sprayed to contain the Zika virus, new research suggests.

  • Blood pressure readings of 130/80 millimeters of mercury (mm Hg) or higher taken at home can be used to diagnose hypertension in white, black and Hispanic U.S. adults, according to new research in the American Heart Association’s journal Hypertension.

  • Heat stress affects the health of workers and reduces the work productivity by changing the ambient working environment thus leading to economic losses. How to quantify the impact of heat stress on work productivity has remained an issue to the scientific research and policy-making.

  • Whether some American football players suffer from concussion after a hit on the head may depend on the number and severity of head impacts that they sustain in the days, weeks, and months leading up to the concussion, rather than a single large head impact. This is according to Brian Stemper of the Marquette University and Medical College of Wisconsin in the US. Stemper is lead author of a study on concussion in college football in the Springer-branded journal Annals of Biomedical Engineering. The findings provide further support for policies that try to limit head impact exposure during football training and games. 

  • St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital researchers have evidence that common genetic variations can help to identify pediatric cancer survivors who are at increased risk for developing breast cancer while relatively young. The findings appear today in the journal Clinical Cancer Research.

  • Exposure to wood smoke can have different effects on the respiratory immune systems of men and women – effects that may be obscured when data from men and women are lumped together, according to a study published today in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine by scientists at the UNC School of Medicine and the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health.

  • The first study investigating the mechanism of how a disease develops using human organ-on-a-chip technology has been successfully completed by engineers at The University of Texas at Austin.

  • The use of pesticides has been linked to a sharp rise in colon cancer deaths in a developing country for the first time.