Noted

Babies need food, but lack of diapers hits their mothers harder. In the first peer-reviewed study of its kind, epidemiologist and assistant professor in psychiatry Megan V. Smith and her colleagues found that almost 30 percent of the 877 low-income mothers and grandmothers they interviewed in the New Haven area reported having an inadequate diaper supply. These caregivers were also more likely to report increased levels of stress and depression—even more so than those who were having trouble affording enough food. Pediatricians should refer women in need to diaper banks and other agencies, Smith writes in Pediatrics.

Estrogen replacement therapy was largely abandoned after the 2002 study that linked treatment with estrogen and progestin, in tandem, to increases in cancer, heart disease, and stroke. But a new analysis finds that for many women aged 50 to 59 who have undergone hysterectomies, estrogen-only therapy can be lifesaving. Philip Sarrel, emeritus professor of obstetrics and gynecology and of psychiatry, and his colleagues write in the American Journal of Public Health that for this subgroup, avoiding estrogen therapy may have contributed to almost 50,000 unnecessary deaths over the last ten years.

The ancestors of today’s spiny-rayed fishes arose about 140 million years ago and evolved into a myriad of shapes and sizes: today, there are some 18,000 species. In the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, evolutionary biologist Thomas J. Near and an international group of colleagues presented the most detailed family tree to date. Using molecular and fossil techniques, they found some unexpected relationships. Swordfish and tuna, for instance, look so similar that they were once assumed to be in the same taxonomic group. But swordfish are more closely related to flatfish, and tuna are surprisingly close relations to seahorses.