Singing to your infant can significantly boost the baby’s mood, according to a recent study. Around the world and across cultures, singing to babies seems to come instinctively to caregivers. Now, new findings support that singing is an easy, safe, and free way to help improve the mental well-being of infants. Because improved mood in infancy is associated with a greater quality of life for both parents and babies, this in turn has benefits for the health of the entire family, the researchers say. The study also helps explain why musical behaviors may have evolved in parents.

New research has found that men who carry a common genetic variant are twice as likely to develop dementia in their lifetime compared to women.

An international clinical trial shows an innovative CAR-T cell immunotherapy is promising against aggressive T cell cancers and has manageable side effects.

16 hours agoShareSaveShareSavePeter Dazeley/ Getty CreativeFrom Sunday, it will be illegal for businesses to sell or supply disposable vapes. The government hopes the ban will reduce environmental damage caused by the devices and help cut the number of children and young people vaping.How are the rules about vapes changing?Disposable vapes banFrom 1 June 2025, businesses will be banned from selling or supplying any single-use vapes, whether that’s in shops or online.Retailers caught breaking the law in England face a minimum £200 fine, with a prison sentence of up to two years for repeat offences. Penalties are broadly similar in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Trading Standards will be able to seize any single-use vapes they find.Only devices considered to be reusable will be legal. That means that they must have a rechargeable battery, a replaceable coil, and be refillable.It won’t be illegal to own a disposable vape after 1 June. Customers can still return them, and retailers have an obligation to get rid of them.Vaping taxVaping products are already subject to 20% VAT but, unlike tobacco, they do not currently attract a separate additional tax.A new vaping duty will start on 1 October 2026. It will be charged at a flat rate of £2.20 per 10ml vaping liquid.At the same time, tobacco duty will be increased to preserve the financial incentive for cigarette smokers to switch to vaping.Advertising and sponsorship banThe government’s Tobacco and Vapes Bill – which is currently making its way through Parliament – will outlaw vape advertising and sponsorship.It will also restrict the flavours, packaging and display of vapes and other nicotine products. Children have been targeted with colours, branding and flavours such as bubble gum or candy floss, to push a product that can lead to nicotine addiction, the British Medical Association has warned.Illegal vapesThe government is also cracking down on iIlegal vapes, which are widely available and are much more likely to contain other harmful chemicals or drugs.More than six million illegal vaping products were seized by Trading Standards officers across England between 2022 and 2024, according to analysis by the BBC.Why are disposable vapes so bad for the environment?The ban on disposable vapes was introduced to tackle their impact on the environment.Almost five million single-use vapes were thrown away each week in 2023, according to the Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (Defra).As well as lithium-ion batteries, vapes also contain circuit boards. If these aren’t not disposed of properly, they can leak toxic compounds such as cobalt and copper.That means fish, and marine mammals could mistake vapes for food and ingest poisonous chemicals.The Local Government Association (LGA), also says that single-use vapes are “a hazard for waste and litter collection and cause fires in bin lorries”.However, recycling disposable vapes is not straightforward because of their size and the way they are manufactured, which makes them difficult to take apart.These minerals and the lithium could – if recovered – be reused for green technologies such as electric car batteries or in wind turbines.There is currently no large-scale disposable vape recycling in the UK. There are so many different types of vape on the market that it is difficult to develop a standard recycling process.How many children and adults vape?Around 18% of 11 to 17-year-olds (980,000 children) have tried vaping, according to a 2024 survey by health charity ASH (Action on Smoking and Health).About 7% (390,000 children) said they currently vaped, down from 8% in 2023, but still well above the 4% figure recorded in 2020.In contrast, just over 5% of 11 to 17-year-olds (280,000 children) said they currently smoked, while just under 3% (150,000 children) said they both smoked and vaped.Among all age groups over 16, the use of vapes has risen, with about 5.1 million people using a vape or e-cigarette in 2023. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) says 5.9% of people aged 16 and over vaped every day, up slightly from the previous year, while another 3.9% did so occasionally.The group with the highest rate of vape use – nearly 16% – was 16-24 year-olds.GettyHow harmful are vapes to children and adults? Vaping is nowhere near as harmful as smoking cigarettes, which contain tobacco, tar and a range of other toxic cancer-causing chemicals, and is one of the largest preventable causes of illness and death in the UK.But because vaping may itself cause long-term damage to lungs, hearts and brains, it is only recommended for adult smokers trying to quit as part of the NHS “swap to stop” programme.The vapour inhaled contains a small amount of chemicals, often including the addictive substance nicotine.”Vapes can be an effective way for adult smokers to quit – but we have always been clear that children and adult non-smokers should never vape,” the Department of Health and Social Care has said.More research is needed to fully understand the effects of vaping, but in December 2023, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned “alarming evidence” was growing about the damage it causes.In February 2025, the government said a £62m research project would track 100,000 eight to 18-year-olds for a decade to better understand the risks.

2 hours agoShareSaveIan AikmanBBC NewsShareSaveGetty ImagesThe ban on single-use vapes is unlikely to reduce the appeal of e-cigarettes to teenagers because re-usable models are so similar to disposables, the head of a campaign group has warned.Disposable vapes will be banned in the UK from Sunday in an effort to curb youth vaping rates and reduce electronic waste.But Hazel Cheeseman, chief executive of Action on Smoking and Health (Ash), said new reusable vapes are “very similar” to single-use vapes, meaning it is “unlikely [the ban] will have that much impact on the appeal of products”. Circular Economy Minister Mary Creagh said the government was “taking action and banning single use vapes to reduce waste and environmental damage”.The government has previously said the ban would “reduce the appeal of vapes to children”.A quarter of 11 to 15-year-olds have tried vaping and nearly 1 in 10 vape often, according to NHS research from 2024.Ms Cheeseman welcomed the legislation as a step towards tougher regulations on vaping products, but said stronger action will be needed to make vaping less appealing to young people who have never smoked. “Teenagers weren’t drawn to these products because you could throw them away,” she told BBC Breakfast. “They were drawn to them because they were brightly coloured, because they were cheap, and they were really, really available. All of those things will still be true on Sunday.”Some reusable vapes have “identical” packaging to their single-use counterparts, are sold at the same price, and give customers little information about how to refill them, she said.”The manufacturers are not making it easy for people to change their behaviour.”The government’s Tobacco and Vapes Bill, a separate piece of legislation, will give ministers the power to take action that “probably will reduce the appeal of these products to teenagers”, she said. These actions include regulating the packaging and design of vape products, as well as restricting advertising.Vaping is substantially less harmful than smoking cigarettes, but it has not been around for long enough for its long-term risks to be known, according to the NHS.Because of this, it is only recommended as a method to help adult smokers quit.’Big environmental burden’Despite her concerns about its effect on teen uptake, Ms Cheeseman said the disposables ban was “important regulation” that will help ease the “big environmental burden” of vaping.Almost five million single-use vapes were thrown away each week in 2023, according to the Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (Defra).As well as lithium-ion batteries, vapes contain circuit boards, which can leak toxic compounds if not disposed of properly.A switch to reusable vapes, which can be recharged and refilled with e-liquid, would in theory allow users to keep e-cigarettes for longer without creating waste.But some have raised concerns over whether the ban will have this effect.Kate Pike, lead officer for tobacco and vaping at the Chartered Trading Standards Institute, said reusable vapes costing the same as disposables “is a worry”.”It’s a real worry that people will continue to use them as single-use disposable and therefore it won’t help limit the damage to the environment,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.She added that there is a “cost benefit” to reusing and recharging a vape, instead of buying a new one, so she hopes fewer vapes will be thrown away. “But it is a potential danger,” she said.John Dunne, director general of the UK Vaping Industry Association, said the ban was “ill-thought out”.Changing regulations to allow vapes to have larger tank sizes would have been “more sensible”, he told the Today programme, as this would have increased prices from “around the £5 range” to up to £10 or £15.The ban on disposable vapes was first announced under the previous Conservative government.Labour confirmed it would keep the legislation in October last year, with Defra minister Creagh saying disposable vapes were “extremely wasteful and blight our towns and cities”.The government has also previously said banning disposables would “reduce the appeal of vapes to children and keep them out of the hands of vulnerable young people”.

Long considered a disease brought to the Americas by European colonizers, leprosy may actually have a much older history on the American continent. Scientists reveal that a recently identified second species of bacteria responsible for leprosy, Mycobacterium lepromatosis, has been infecting humans in the Americas for at least 1,000 years, several centuries before the Europeans arrived.

He worked with a team at the University of Utah to create a mechanical heart. It was later used in patients awaiting an organ transplant.Dr. Robert K. Jarvik, the principal designer of the first permanent artificial heart implanted in a human — a procedure that became a subject of great public fascination and fierce debate about medical ethics — died on Monday at his home in Manhattan. He was 79.His wife, the writer Marilyn vos Savant, said the cause was complications of Parkinson’s disease.In 1982, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration gave the University of Utah permission to implant what was designed to be a permanent artificial heart in a human. On Dec. 2 that year, Dr. William C. DeVries led the pioneering surgical team that implanted the Jarvik-7 model, made of aluminum and plastic, in a 61-year-old retired Seattle dentist, Barney B. Clark.Dr. Clark at first declined to receive the Jarvik-7, Dr. DeVries was quoted as saying in a 2012 university retrospective, but he changed his mind on Thanksgiving after he had to be carried by a son to the dinner table. Dr. Clark’s chronic heart disease had left him weeks from death. If the surgery didn’t work for him, he told doctors, maybe it would help others.During the seven-hour surgery, according to the retrospective, Dr. Clark’s heart muscle tore like tissue paper as it was removed after so many years of being treated with steroids.Upon awakening, Dr. DeVries said, Dr. Clark told his wife, Una Loy Clark, “I want to tell you even though I have no heart, I still love you.”Barney B. Clark, the first recipient of the Jarvik-7 artificial heart, with Dr. William C. DeVries, who led the surgical team that implanted it, at the University of Utah hospital in 1982.Associated PressWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Researchers determined how much outdoor particulate pollution affects indoor air quality. Their study concluded pollution from inversion and dust events is kept out of buildings, but wildfire smoke can sneak inside if efficient ‘air-side economizers’ are in use.

Humans and mice share persistent brain-activity patterns in response to adverse sensory experience, scientists find, opening a window to our emotions and, perhaps, neuropsychiatric disorders.

Scientists have documented the way a single gene in the bacterium that causes bubonic plague, Yersinia pestis, allowed it to survive hundreds of years by adjusting its virulence and the length of time it took to kill its victims, but these forms of plague ultimately died out.