Not if we could work a way around our boredom, it could be a very different kind of future waiting for us   If you imagine yourself as an elf, live along side with men, dwarves, goblins and orcs, and any nasty creatures of Middle Earth for thousands of years, you might get frustrated...

There’s a lot to be said for living a good, honest life. If you avoid lying, chances are you’ll have an easier time at work. You won’t have to sneak around with your significant other. You’ll be well liked by the clergy. And according to new research by scientists at the University of...

Want to maximize your learning capacity? Get some sleep. That’s the takeaway from a study that examined the influence of sleep and time of day on learning and memory. This latest research is another piece of compelling evidence that sleeping helps to strengthen our ability to learn new...

Eastern Europe isn’t known as a mecca for healthy living. Those who haven’t visited Eastern Europe might still imagine that it’s filled with smoking teenagers and obese babushkas. Although that still exists, Eastern Europeans have some healthy practices that we could all learn from. For...

Placebo treatments can be effective in treating some conditions by the “self-healing” capabilities of the brain   There’s good evidence showing expectations to get better have significant effects on how patients suffering a variety of ailments feel. This is called the placebo effect...

New research reveals more clues as to why our ginger brethren seem, well, just a little bit different. Specifically, redheads appear to feel pain differently. While redheads are more sensitive to the cold, they appear to have a higher pain threshold than the rest of us. A recent study showed...

Does exercise keep your brain running?   Moving the body demands a lot from the brain. Exercise activates countless neurons, which generate, receive and interpret repeated, rapid-fire messages from the nervous system, coordinating muscle contractions, vision, balance, organ function and...

Cancer is a disease of the body’s cells that affects around half of all Australians by the age of 85. Normally cells grow and multiply in a controlled way. But if something causes a mistake to occur in the cells’ genetic blueprints, this control can be lost. There are a number of...

Your daily cup of coffee may be doing more for you than providing that early-morning pick-me-up. The health impact of coffee has long been a controversial topic, with advocates touting its antioxidant activity and brain-boosting ability, and detractors detailing downsides such as insomnia,...

The world is filled with a variety of sounds. While some noises may produce joy and happiness, others may generate contrasting emotions such as sadness and anger. The impact of sound is powerful and affects multiple areas of everyday life. Noise can even affect one’s health and well-being....

Tackling a crossword can crowd the tip of your tongue. You know that you know the answers to 3 Down and 5 Across, but the words just won’t come out. Then, when you’ve given up and moved on to another clue, comes blessed relief. The elusive answer suddenly occurs to you, crystal clear.The...

Cognitive function may be a better indicator of the impact of aging on an economy than age-distribution, with chronological age imposing less of a social and economic burden if the population is “functionally” younger, according to a study published today in the Proceedings of the...

Toxo Terror: Or, the Call That’s Coming From Within the House   The sheer ubiquity of microscopic organisms is staggering. Microbiologist Tom Curtis recently compared the size of the microbial population to the size of the universe: The number of microbes in the world is billions of...

Call it researching disease in the cloud or just plain illuminating, but Princeton researchers today published a paper in Science that demonstrates how aerial night images can be used to monitor the spread of epidemic in the developing world by tracking light density. That’s a mouthful, but...

Our body language can reveal more about what we know than our verbal language Gesture doesn’t hinder clear thought and speech — it facilitates it. Research demonstrates that the movements we make with our hands when we talk constitute a kind of second language, adding information that’s...

Smoking could reduce erect penis size! “Smoking could reduce the size of a man’s erect penis, researchers said Sunday. The shrinking manhood warning came from the Boston University School of Medicine when they revealed preliminary findings from a study of 200 men in the London...

The bryostatins, and many other natural products, might never have been mined from the sea for their disease-fighting compounds if not for the efforts of George R. Pettit. Known to his friends as Bob, Pettit has been searching the sea for cancer-fighting compounds for more than 40 years, as a...

Vibrators have existed for centuries, but have you ever wondered how they came to be? This week we’re delving into the colourful past of these popular bedroom toys If you can remember the first mobile phones; then you may not be surprised to hear that vibrators haven’t always come in the...

Most bacterial infections can be treated with antibiotics such as penicillin, discovered decades ago. However, such drugs are useless against viral infections, including influenza, the common cold, and deadly hemorrhagic fevers such as Ebola. Now, in a development that could transform how...

Scientist sees aging cured   If Aubrey de Grey‘s predictions are right, the first person who will live to see their 150th birthday has already been born. And the first person to live for 1,000 years could be less than 20 years younger. A biomedical gerontologist and chief scientist...

A variation in a gene involved in regulating cholesterol in the bloodstream also appears to affect progesterone production in women, making it a likely culprit in a substantial number of cases of their infertility, a new study from Johns Hopkins researchers suggests. The Hopkins group has also...

A Clinical Plan for MDMA (Ecstasy) in the Treatment of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): Partnering with the FDA By Rick Doblin, Ph.D. The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS, www.maps.org), a membership-based non-profit research and educational organization, is...