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Researchers have discovered more about the mechanisms underlying female sexual arousal using a novel prototype drug called UK-414,495, according to findings published this week in the British Journal of Pharmacology.Researchers found that electrically stimulating the pelvic nerve increases blood flow to the genitalia, and that this effect was enhanced if they also gave the prototype drug. They believe that UK-414,495 acts by blocking the breakdown of an internal chemical messenger that plays a key role in increasing blood flow during sexual arousal.

a new review published in the April issue of The Cochrane Library suggests that restrictions on smoking in public reduce secondhand smoke exposure, heart attacks, and improve a number health indicators. Researchers searched for studies of situations where a legislative ban had been introduced, or restrictions on smoking had been applied to populations. They considered data from 50 studies that monitored at least the first six months after a policy change had been implemented."Taken together, the benefits for workers and the reduction of hospital-related morbidity are impressive," says Professor Cecily Kelleher, School of Public Health, Physiotherapy and Population Science at University College Dublin, Ireland.

New satellite data indicate that March 2010 was the third warmest month since December 1978, compared to seasonal norms, according to researchers at the Earth System Science Center (ESSC) at The University of Alabama in Huntsville. Powered by the most intense El Nino Pacific Ocean warming event since 1997-1998, the first three months of 2010 have all landed among the six warmest months in the satellite temperature record, which starts in December 1978.

Anthropologists writing in the Journal of Social Archaeology say they have found evidence indicating that Mayan citizens recorded their family history by burying it within their homes. Maya in the Classic period (A.D. 250-900) regularly "terminated" their homes, razing the walls, burning the floors and placing artifacts and (sometimes) human remains on top before burning them again.Evidence suggests these rituals occurred every 40 or 50 years and likely marked important dates in the Maya calendar. After termination, the family built a new home on the old foundation, using broken and whole vessels, colorful fragments, animal bones and rocks to mark important areas and to provide ballast for a new plaster floor.

Researchers have identified the brain circuit that underlies our ability to resist instant gratification in order to earn a better payoff. The effort provides insight, scientists say, into the capacity for "mental time travel," also known as episodic future thought, that enables humans to make choices with high long-term benefits. Results of the research are published in Neuron. Several models have been proposed to explain the neural basis of assigning relative value to multiple rewards at different points in time (also known as "intertemporal decision making") in humans. Until now, however, many questions remained unanswered, and the brain regions and mechanisms involved in this process were unclear.

Exclusive licenses to gene patents are supposed to spur development of new technologies for gauging disease risk but actually do more to block competition in the gene testing market, say researchers from the Duke Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy (IGSP).As single-gene tests give way to multi-gene or even whole-genome scans, exclusive patent rights could slow promising new technologies and business models for genetic testing even further, the Duke researchers say.The findings emerge from a series of case studies that examined genetic risk testing for 10 clinical conditions, including breast and colon cancer, cystic fibrosis, and hearing loss. The studies appear April 14 in a special issue of Genetics in Medicine.

University of Delaware psychologists say that jealously may literally impair vision. In a recent study published in Emotion, the researchers found that women who were made to feel jealous were so distracted by unpleasant emotional images they became unable to spot targets they were trying to find.It has long been known that the emotions involved in social relationships affect mental and physical health, but these results extend the relationship a step further, to the point that emotions affect what we see.

Just ten years ago, researchers assumed that countries needed the freedoms of democracy to cross the digital divide, but a new study in Sociological Inquiry suggests that countries don't necessarily need democracy to join the online community. Rather, social factors such as population growth and violent conflict are much more important -- and capitalism trumps them all.China, a pro-capitalist autocracy, has since joined the Internet by virtue of being an economic powerhouse. While the country struggles to restrict citizens' access to information from the rest of the world, China has succeeded in making the Internet part of its economy.

Slender women worry about packing on extra weight, say Brigham Young University researchers who used MRI technology to observe what happened in the brain when people viewed images of complete strangers.If the stranger happened to be overweight and female, it surprisingly activated an area in women's brains that processes identity and self-reflection. Men did not show signs of any self-reflection in similar situations."These women have no history of eating disorders and project an attitude that they don't care about body image," said Mark Allen, a BYU neuroscientist. "Yet under the surface is an anxiety about getting fat and the centrality of body image to self."The results appear in Personality and Individual Differences.

Researchers from North Carolina State University are making an attempt to help academia lose its "ivory tower" reputation by connecting students to their local communities. The new research project lays out guidelines that can be used to develop and implement partnerships between academics and local communities to foster research efforts that address social problems.

Mirror neurons are the cells in the brain that fire not only when we perform a particular action but also when we watch someone else perform that same action.Neuroscientists believe this "mirroring" is the mechanism by which we can "read" the minds of others and empathize with them. It's how we "feel" someone's pain, how we discern a grimace from a grin, a smirk from a smile.However, there was no proof that mirror neurons existed — only suspicion and indirect evidence. Now, researching writing in Current Biology say they have for the first time made a direct recording of mirror neurons in the human brain.

Despite their vocal criticism of the health care legislation enacted by Congress, the majority of Americans want some kind of reform, according to a new poll conducted by Indiana University's Center for Health Policy and Professionalism Research (CHPPR).Fifty-eight percent of Americans (96 percent of Republicans, 10 percent of Democrats and 54 percent of Independents) support repealing the health care reform legislation that was signed into law by President Barack Obama in March.