Though bees can live for years, their mating period is brief so male honeybees use a bee version of Flunitrazepam (Rohypnol - colloquially roofies) to improve their chances of being the successful dad. They inject vision-imparing toxins during sex that cause temporary blindness in females and keep them from flying off to other males.

The toxins identified in a new study are proteins contained in male bees' seminal fluid which helps maintain sperm. All honeybees make these proteins, though some may make more of it than others, and honeybee seminal fluid toxins can not only kill the sperm of rivals, it can cause temporary blindness, it turns out.

During puberty, male and female brains clearly become more distinct, with boys showing an increase in connectivity in certain brain areas previously identified as conferring risk for mood problems in adolescents, and girls showing a decrease in connectivity as puberty progresses. 

The researchers analyzed brain scans of 147 girls and 157 boys, aged between 13 and 15, from centers in Dublin, London, Dresden, Mannheim, and Paris.They were at varying puberty stages, from having not started their puberty to being fully mature. The researchers took images of the brain activity while the adolescent volunteers were lying still in an MRI scanner. 

First discovered in 1947 by Bedouin shepherds looking for a lost sheep, the ancient Hebrew texts now known as the Dead Sea Scrolls are some of the most well-preserved ancient written materials ever found.

And among the roughly 900 full or partial scrolls found in the years since that first discovery, the best preserved is the Temple Scroll, at almost 25 feet also among the longest. It is the best-preserved even though its material is the thinnest of all of them (one-tenth of a millimeter, or roughly 1/250th of an inch thick). It also has the clearest, whitest writing surface of all the scrolls. 

Implanted brain electrodes can help alleviate symptoms of tremors like with Parkinson's disease but current probes face limitations due to their size and inflexibility.

Neurotechnology may be on the verge of a major renaissance and mesh electronics could lead to a way to design personalized electronic treatment for just about anything related to the brain.

Emily E. Petersen, MD; Nicole L. Davis, PhD; David Goodman, PhD; et al. have produced a report on racial disparities in pregnancy-related deaths between 2007 and 2016.

The sample is small, only about 700 women die of pregnancy or its complications each year, and that is out of 6,000,000 pregnancies, so it is hard to draw conclusions but data from CDC’s Pregnancy Mortality Surveillance System (PMSS) for 2007–2016 find that black and American Indian/Alaska Native women had significantly more pregnancy-related deaths per 100,000 births than did white, Hispanic, and Asian/Pacific Islander women. 

Two statistical analyses looked at common disease incidence, hospitalization and death, plus modifiable cardiovascular risk factors in middle-aged adults across 21 High-Income, Middle-Income, and Low-Income Countries and found that cancer is now the leading cause of death in wealthier countries.

That's a good thing. It means cardiovascular deaths are in decline, which means greater longevity. The number one risk factor for cancer is instead age.