WASHINGTON --A paper published online yesterday in Annals of Emergency Medicine warns that a new street drug combining fentanyl and a novel synthetic opioid is being marketed illicitly as Norco but is much stronger and much more dangerous ("Fentanyl and a Novel Synthetic Opioid U-47700 Masquerading as Street 'Norco' in Central California: A Case Report").

Ever taken a selfie? Around the world, people snap tens of millions of these self-portraits every day, usually with a mobile device held at arm's length. For all their raging popularity, though, selfies can often be misrepresentative, even unflattering. Due to the camera's proximity, selfies render subjects' noses larger, ears smaller and foreheads more sloping.

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- With a shortage of donor organs, Mayo Clinic is exploring therapeutic strategies for patients with debilitating liver diseases. Researchers are testing a new approach to correct metabolic disorders without a whole organ transplant. Their findings appear in Science Translational Medicine.

The medical research study tested gene therapy in pigs suffering from hereditary tyrosinemia type 1 (HT1), a metabolic disorder caused by an enzyme deficiency. The common treatment for this disease is a drug regimen, but it is ineffective in many patients, and the long-term safety of using the drug is unknown.

While most farmers are actively trying to kill weeds, researchers in Ohio are trying to grow them - fast. Taraxacum kok-saghyz, a special variety of dandelion from Kazakhstan -- nicknamed "Buckeye Gold" by the researchers studying it -- may be the answer to sustainable and U.S.-based rubber-making. An article in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, examines the plants' potential for revolutionizing the rubber industry.

COLUMBUS, Ohio - You don't have to get married to settle down and leave behind your wild ways - you just have to expect to get married soon.

Researchers found that teenagers and young adults who expected to get married within the next five years reported committing fewer delinquent acts in the next year than those who weren't thinking about wedding bells.

While other studies have shown that people commit fewer crimes when they get married, this is the first to show that people straighten up their act even before they tie the knot.

"You may start to act married even before the wedding," said Rachel Arocho, lead author of the study and a research fellow in human development and family science at The Ohio State University.

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, along with other telescopes on the ground and in space, have discovered a new type of exotic binary star: in the system AR Scorpii a rapidly spinning white dwarf star is powering electrons up to almost the speed of light. These high energy particles release blasts of radiation that lash the companion red dwarf star, and cause the entire system to pulse dramatically every 1.97 minutes with radiation ranging from the ultraviolet to radio.