Help Earth with smaller families?

There are plenty of ways to cut your carbon footprint, whether it's driving less or buying an energy-efficient refrigerator. But the British Medical Journal, in an editorial last month, urged a more controversial one: having fewer children.

With 60 million people already living in one of the most densely populated countries in the world, the journal said, British couples should aim to have no more than two children as part of their contribution to worldwide efforts to reduce carbon emissions, stem climate change and ease demands on the world's resources.

Limiting family size is "the simplest and biggest contribution anyone can make to leaving a habitable planet for our grandchildren," the editorial's authors said.

Family planning as a means to reduce climate change has been little talked about in international climate forums, largely because it is so politically sensitive.

And the appeal to have fewer children sounds a bit odd in Europe, where one of the biggest worries these days is plunging birthrates.

But each child born in a rich country like Britain or the United States is likely to be responsible for 160 times as much carbon emitted as a child born in Ethiopia, said John Guillebaud, a British family-planning doctor, university professor and one of the editorial's authors.

Microbes in the wrong place at the wrong time -- a woman's amniotic fluid during pregnancy -- might play a role in causing premature births, according to a study in the online journal PLoS ONE.

Using a sensitive molecular technique, researchers found a greater quantity and variety of bacteria and fungi in a significant portion of women who gave birth prematurely. The more severe the infection, the earlier the women were likely to give birth.

Ever wonder why it is so hard to swat flies?

It's because they don't just fly away from impending doom. They first jump in a direction that takes them away from the swatter, said California Institute of Technology bioengineer Michael Dickinson.

He and graduate student Gwyneth Card reported Thursday in the journal Current Biology that, about 200 milliseconds before impact, the fly's tiny brain calculates the location of the threat, then maneuvers its legs into the optimum position to jump out of the way.

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