Recent study revealed that a brief test known as pulse oximetry screening on newborn babies can help in detection of duct dependent congenital heart disease.

One or two babies per 1000 live births are born with immediately life threatening heart abnormality, because a fetal blood vessel called the ductus arteriosus - which bypasses the baby's non-functioning lungs when in the uterus and normally closes off soon after birth - remains partly open. Current screening techniques fail to detect the abnormality in many newborns.

The Children's Oncology Group (COG) study revealed that mutations in a gene called IKAROS can help predict a high likelihood of relapse in children with acute lymphoblast leukaemia (ALL).

Experts from St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, the University of New Mexico Cancer Research and Treatment Centre, Albuquerque and the National Cancer Institute conducted the recent study.

Recent research has shown that socio-emotional meanings, including sexual ones, are conveyed in human sweat. Researchers at the Rice University in Texas found that women can subconsciously sniff out men who are attracted to them.

Research team led by Denise Chen, assistant professor of psychology at Rice studied how the brains of female volunteers processed and encoded the smell of sexual sweat from men.

Recent study showed that children born in the months of December, January and February are, on average are less educated, less intelligent, less healthy and lower paid as grown ups as compared to children born in other seasons.

Kasey Buckles and Daniel Hungerman of the University of Notre Dame studied U. S census data and birth certificates to determine if the typical woman giving birth in winter is any different from the typical woman giving birth at other times of the year.

A study conducted by the scientists at the Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut, revealed that a hazardous type of snoring called sleep apnea can result in stroke by lowering blood flow to the brain, increasing blood pressure and eventually harming the brain’s capability to adapt these changes.

Writing in the Journal of Applied Physiology, the group led by Vahid Mohsenin said that their findings may help clarify why people having sleep apnea are more likely to suffer strokes and to die during sleep.

Falling in love or make someone fall in love won’t be that difficult anymore, since a nose spray is under trial for this purpose. The latest tests have shown that drugs could be used to alter the brain's emotion-controlling areas to heighten or suppress feelings of attraction.

The researchers said, “The treatments could be used to aid marriage counseling or even help a person stay monogamous.”