As millions of visually impaired people will tell you, people with full sight often make incorrect assumptions about their capabilities. It's not mean, it's benevolent, but people are uncomfortable with not knowing what is proper decorum and some can make hilarious errors.

Observations of Greenland's Helheim Glacier link the process through which chunks of ice at the edge of a glacier break away, which has been hard to study, to seismically detectable events known as glacial earthquakes, which have been increasing in number in recent years.

Because seismic signals from these events can be detected by instruments located all over the globe, it should be possible to use glacial earthquakes as proxies for the glacier edge breaking process, known as calving.

The Phase IIb pivotal study of P2B001 for the treatment of early stage Parkinson's Disease has been announced as a success. 

P2B001 is a combination of low dose pramipexole and low dose rasagiline administered as a proprietary sustained release formulation. The study, titled A Phase IIb, Twelve Week, Multi-Center, Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled, Parallel Group Study, To Determine the Safety, Tolerability and Efficacy of Two Doses of Once Daily P2B001 in Subjects with Early Parkinson's Disease, showed that it met primary and secondary clinical endpoints for both dose combinations. Specifically, the results showed:

Researchers at the Medical and Surgical Center for Retina have developed software that detects eye diseases such as diabetic macular edema using a smartphone. 

The technology was designed for general physicians who support the health system in Mexico to detect certain abnormalities without  an ophthalmologist and send the patient to the specialist.

It's obviously better and cheaper to prevent blindness rather than try to cure it so an app on a cellphone that just needs to focus on the eye is better in all ways. This is especially important in rural communities, where expertise areas such as ophthalmology won't be commonly available.

A milk-and ochre-based paint dates that may have been used by inhabitants to South Africa to adorn themselves or decorate stone or wood slabs has been dated to 49,000 years ago. 

While the use of ochre by early humans dates to at least 250,000 years ago in Europe and Africa, this is the first time a paint containing ochre and milk has ever been found in association with early humans in South Africa, said Paola Villa, a curator at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History and lead study author.

The milk likely was obtained by killing lactating members of the bovid family such as buffalo, eland, kudu and impala, she said.

The brains of people with recurrent depression have a significantly smaller hippocampus (the part of the brain most associated with forming new memories) than healthy individuals, according to a study of nearly 9,000 people called the ENIGMA study.

The researchers say this is the largest international study to compare brain volumes in people with and without major depression. It highlights the need to identify and treat depression effectively when it first occurs, particularly among teenagers and young adults. Using magnetic resonance imaged (MRI) brain scans, and clinical data from 1,728 people with major depression and 7,199 healthy individuals, the study combined 15 datasets from Europe, the USA and Australia.