Oxytocin is a neuropeptide that is secreted by the body during massage, childbirth and breastfeeding to induce a calming, analgesic effect. Animal studies have also shown that oxytocin promotes…

Taking the epilepsy drug topiramate alone or along with other epilepsy drugs during pregnancy may increase the risk of birth defects, according to a study published in the July 22, 2008, issue of…

Even if you're a caricature of the worst kind of maintenance person, such as Groundskeeper Willie in "The Simpson", there's a lesson for real life teachers. Apparently, the lesson is 'don't be like…

Few things say as much about our culture as the food we eat. A new book, Glazed America: A History of the Doughnut by Paul R. Mullins, Ph.D., an Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis…

In a major step in understanding how the nervous system and the immune system interact, scientists at The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research have identified a new anatomical path through which…

Nutrients from the Amazon River spread well beyond the continental shelf and drive carbon capture in the deep ocean, according to the authors of a multi-year study. The finding does not change…

Geoscientists at the California Institute of Technology have come up with a new explanation for the formation of monsoons, proposing an overhaul of a theory about the cause of the seasonal pattern of…

For generations, people have consumed cranberry juice, convinced of its power to ward off urinary tract infections, though the exact mechanism of its action has not been well understood. A new study…

The question of whether insulin-producing cells of the pancreas can regenerate is key to our understanding of diabetes, and to the further development of regenerative therapies against the disease.…

For millennia, humans and viruses have been locked in an evolutionary back-and-forth -- one changes to outsmart the other, prompting the second to change and outsmart the first. With retroviruses,…

Biogeoscientists show evidence of 90 billion tons of microbial organisms—expressed in terms of carbon mass—living in the deep biosphere, in a research article published online by Nature. This tonnage…

The Arena.Net folks have produced one of the first FAQs with regard to Guild Wars 2. It answers a lot of basic questions about the game, including whether or not there will be a subscription fee.…

As the name implies, the Friday Grab Bag is a collection of community questions taken from the official Dark Age of Camelot forums. Add some announcements into the mix and you have a good read. Q. Is…

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California at Berkeley have performed the first scanning tunneling…

Nanotechnology is the ability to measure, see, manipulate and manufacture things usually between 1 and 100 nanometers. A nanometer is one billionth of a meter; a human hair is roughly 100,000…

Yes, it's possible, according to John Hawks (who writes an excellent blog): So, I can say without any doubt (if other examples had not been sufficient), it is absolutely possible to write a daily,…

OK, I'm about to dive into an issue I probably shouldn't be talking about on a blog, at least if I have any hope of convincing a hiring committee to consider me, but I'm going to dumbly rush ahead.…

If you had to pick one organism with which to tell the story of the modern science of biology, you couldn't do better than to pick the tiny gut bacterium Escherichia coli, commonly called just E.…

Scientists say they have found a workable way of reducing CO2 levels in the atmosphere by adding lime to seawater. And they think it has the potential to dramatically reverse CO2 accumulation in the…

A new technology that spots tooth decay almost as soon as it’s begun promises to reduce the need for drilling and filling, writes Patrick Walter in SCI’s Chemistry & Industry (C&I) magazine.…