We never miss pharmaceutical companies until they are gone.

Lawsuits, terrifically expensive drug development cycles and trials coupled with a short window for sales before a drug is declared out of patent and therefore generic has meant companies are abandoning markets that are not lucrative, like antibiotics. Critics who believed drug companies were evil and greedy have found that government is incapable of doing applied research - and that is leaving a huge void.

If you take an online practice test, which answer is most likely to stick with you, the ones you got correct or that one you got wrong?

A new paper finds that making mistakes while learning can benefit memory and lead to the correct answer, but only if the guesses are close.

"Making random guesses does not appear to benefit later memory for the right answer , but near-miss guesses act as stepping stones for retrieval of the correct information – and this benefit is seen in younger and older adults," says Andrée-Ann Cyr, a graduate student with Baycrest's Rotman Research Institute and the Department of Psychology at the University of Toronto. 

Not everyone who contracts the Ebola virus dies, the survival rate is actually around 30%, which means some kind of immunity to the disease is possible.

Experimental treatments and vaccines against Ebola exist but there was little interest from governments in streamlining the bureaucracy before the recent outbreak, so they have not undergone phase 2 trials - the U.S. Congress did add $90 million to the $29 billion budget of the National Institutes of Health after Director Francis Collins said money was the thing that had prevented a vaccine in the past. 

During last night's World Series game between the San Francisco Giants and the Kansas City Royals, the batter dropped down a surprise bunt and sprinted to first base. The umpire called him safe and slow motion replay showed he had beaten the throw by mere inches. A good runner will make it from home to first in 5 or 6 seconds so seeing the foot hit the bag before the ball reached the glove was an amazing feat of ocularity.

Thermodiffusion is when a temperature difference establishes a concentration difference in a mixture. Two recent studies build on recent experimental results from the IVIDIL (Influence Vibration on Diffusion in Liquids) research project performed on the International Space Station under microgravity to avoid motion in liquids.

Researchers on an international team recently showed a way to quickly and reliably find the fastest way through a city maze. But rather than using a satellite navigation system, they used chemistry.

It needs a little work before UPS can use it, since the chemical processor was in alkaline liquid, bit it is intriguing proof of concept.