Women who smoke during pregnancy risk delivering aggressive kids according to a new Canada-Netherlands study published in the journal Development and Psychopathology. While previous studies have shown that smoking during gestation causes low birth weight, this research shows mothers who light up during pregnancy can predispose their offspring to an additional risk: violent behaviour.

Cell Transplantation - The Regenerative Medicine Journal, the number two journal ranked by impact factor in the field of transplantation, has become an "open access" journal from the 1st January 2009, starting with volume 18, making it available on the World Wide Web without subscription to researchers and clinicians as well the public and members of the media. The journal's new open access policy aligns it with the policies of a growing number of funding agencies, including the National Institutes of Health and the Wellcome Foundation, said journal coeditor-in-chief Dr. Paul Sanberg, Distinguished Professor at University of South Florida Health.

The discovery more than a decade ago of leptin, an appetite-suppressing hormone secreted by fat tissue, generated headlines and great hopes for an effective treatment for obesity. But hopes dimmed when it was found that obese people are unresponsive to leptin due to development of leptin resistance in the brain. Now, researchers at Children's Hospital Boston report the first agents demonstrated to sensitize the brain to leptin: oral drugs that are already FDA-approved and known to be safe. Findings were published January 7 by the journal Cell Metabolism.