By 2030, life expectancy in England and Wales is expected to reach 85.7 years for men and 87.6 years for women, losing the gap between male and female life expectancy from 6 years in 1981 to just 1·9 years by 2030, according to a new study. 

Between 1981 and 2012, national life expectancy in England and Wales increased by 8·2 years in men (to 79·5 years) and 6·0 years in women (to 83·3 years). However, national progress has come at the cost of rising inequalities, and the gap between the top and bottom 1% of life expectancies in local authority districts of England and Wales has increased by around 0·9 of a year for men (from 5·2 to 6·1 years) and 1·1 years for women (from 4·5 to 5·6 years).

For not being a planet, Pluto certainly has some intriguing features of one.  NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has sent back images of bright and dark regions on the surface of faraway Pluto as it gets closer to flyby in mid-July. 

The images were captured using its telescopic Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) camera in early to mid-April, as it closed within 70 million miles. A technique called image deconvolution sharpens the raw, unprocessed images beamed back to Earth. New Horizons scientists interpreted the data to reveal the dwarf planet has broad surface markings – some bright, some dark – including a bright area at one pole that may be a polar cap.

Rates of infection with the deadly superbug Clostridium difficile were highest in the Northeast region of the country and in the spring season over the last 10 years, according to a new study.

Researchers from the University of Texas retrospectively analyzed 2.3 million cases of Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) from 2001-2010 and found the highest incidence in the Northeast (8.0 CDI discharges/1000 total discharges), followed by the Midwest (6.4/1000), South (5.0/1000), and the West (4.8/1000).

Seasonally, spring had the most cases (6.2 CDI discharges/1000 total discharges), followed by winter (5.9/1000), summer (5.9/1000) and fall (5.6/1000). Adults and older adults followed overall trends, whereas pediatric CDI was highest in winter.

When we think of genetically modified organisms, we usually picture the modern legal definition and a controversy related to how science can aid in herbicide tolerance and insect resistance, but there are other applications of such engineered plants, such as the incorporation of genes for specific nutrients.  Golden Rice is a famous example. Though it is protested by environmental groups, it has been shown to be able to help prevent blindness and death for millions of children.

A new paper suggests that similar bio-fortification of rice with a gene to produce more folate (vitamin B9) could significantly reduce the risk of spina bifida and other neural tube defect conditions caused by deficiency of this nutrient.

Neuroscientists have discovered brain circuitry for encoding positive and negative learned associations in mice. After finding that two circuits showed opposite activity following fear and reward learning, the researchers proved that this divergent activity causes either avoidance or reward-driven behaviors. 

Greenland climate during the last ice age was very unstable, the researchers say, characterized by a number of large, abrupt changes in mean annual temperature that each occurred within several decades. These so-called "Dansgaard-Oeschger events" took place every few thousand years during the last ice age. Temperature changes in Antarctica showed an opposite pattern, with Antarctica cooling when Greenland was warm, and vice versa.