Despite significant falls in the rate of teenage pregnancies over the past two decades in the UK, academic experts say there are still huge regional differences, and the country’s teenage birth rates remain one of highest among developed nations.

The secret of the female orgasm may have been revealed by scientists in a pioneering study. Researchers led by the University of Essex found that women climax more frequently if they have high levels of an inward-looking sense known as interoception.

Today, wildfires are growing larger and more severe as they burn in the wildland urban interface. According to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection more than 1 million acres have been burned in California in 2024 alone. Chemical Insights Research Institute (CIRI) of UL Research Institutes is providing a new website aimed at helping about one-third of the U.S. population living in wildland-urban interface (WUI) areas prepare for the health risks of wildfires. This new site offers up-to-date information that can be used to protect health, homes, and businesses before a fire occurs, with tips on what to do during a fire, and important health guidance for how to handle cleanup and recovery after a WUI fire.

Large-scale protein and gene profiling have massively expanded the landscape of cancer-associated proteins and gene mutations, but it has been difficult to discern whether they play an active role in the disease or are innocent bystanders. In this study, researchers at Baylor College of Medicine revealed a powerful and unbiased machine learning-based approach called FunMap for assessing the role of cancer-associated mutations and understudied proteins, with broad implications for advancing cancer biology and informing therapeutic strategies.

Cleveland Clinic researchers have found definitive proof of a kidney microbiome that influences renal health and kidney stone formation, demonstrating that the urinary tract is not sterile and low levels of bacteria are normal.

The Nature Communications publication describes the rigorous multi-pronged approach a team led by Aaron Miller, PhD, and José Agudelo, MD, used to identify and characterize the small bacterial community by combining preclinical, human and dish studies.