Scientists at Karolinska Institutet, in collaboration with colleagues in Germany and the Netherlands, have identified a previously unknown group of nerve cells in the brain. The nerve cells regulate cardiovascular functions such as heart rhythm and blood pressure. It is hoped that the discovery, which is published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, will be significant in the long term in the treatment of cardiovascular diseases in humans.

The pain relief offered by cannabis varies greatly between individuals, a brain imaging study carried out at the University of Oxford suggests. The researchers found that an oral tablet of THC, the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis, tended to make the experience of pain more bearable, rather than actually reduce the intensity of the pain.

Today's Health Survey for England reveals more than 14 million sufferers of chronic pain - pain which has lasted for more than three months. The study found that pain is more common among some groups than others, pain incurs significant costs and has serious mental health and wellbeing implications.

Researchers have uncovered a genetic basis for fundamental differences between humans and other vertebrates that could also help explain why humans are susceptible to diseases not found in other species. Scientists have wondered why vertebrate species, which look and behave very differently from one another, nevertheless share very similar repertoires of genes.

Until today, a map from 1876 has been the backbone for our understanding of global biodiversity. Thanks to advances in modern technology and data on more than 20,000 species, scientists have now produced a next-generation map depicting the organization of life on Earth. Published online in Science Express , the new map provides fundamental information regarding the diversity of life on our planet and is of major significance for future biodiversity research.

Adults whose parents struggled with addiction, unemployment and divorce are 10 times more likely to have been victims of childhood physical abuse, says a new study from the University of Toronto. More than one-third of adults who grew up in homes where all three risk factors were present reported they had been physically abused by someone close to them while under the age of 18 and still living at home, said researchers at U of T's Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work.

At the southern tip of Australia, Berkeley Lab scientists are helping to verify that depleted natural gas reservoirs can be repurposed for use as geologic carbon sequestration sites. In Mississippi, they're exploring whether it's possible to produce electricity from the Earth's heat using CO2 , as well as store some of the CO2 permanently underground.

Eating meals together as a family, even if only twice a week, boosts children's daily fruit and vegetable intake to near the recommended 5 A Day, according to researchers at the University of Leeds. It is published today in the British Medical Journal’s Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health .

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. The discovery that hundreds of stars are rapidly moving together in long, looping orbits around the center of our galaxy has been announced by a team of scientists including a Penn State University astronomer and others collaborating in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III).

Top science stories for the year traveled from the canyons of Mars to the high desert forests of New Mexico, from cosmic particles to the structure of proteins and enzymes. Computer models of wildfires, and nuclear magnetic resonance signatures of plutonium, it all was fascinating for those following Los Alamos' science news.

A new study of the brain anatomy of therizinosaurs, plant-eating dinosaurs that lived during the Cretaceous Period, has revealed interesting links with their notorious meat-eating 'cousins' Tyrannosaurus rex and Velociraptor . An international team of scientists, including PhD student Stephan Lautenschlager and Emily Rayfield of the University of Bristol, found that the senses of smell, hearing and balance were well developed in therizinosaurs and might have affected or benefited from an enlarged forebrain.

Much has been made about who or what is to blame for the "obesity epidemic" and what can or should be done to stem the tide of rising body mass among the U.S. population. A new book by a UCLA sociologist turns these concerns on their head by asking two questions. First, how and why has fatness been medicalized as "obesity" in the first place? Second, what are the social costs of this particular way of discussing body size? In " What's Wrong With Fat? ", to be published Jan.

The protein kinase Akt is a key regulator of cell growth, proliferation, metabolism, survival, and death. New work on Akt's role in cancer stem cell biology from the lab of senior author Honglin Zhou, MD, PhD and Weihua Li, co-first author, both from the Center for Resuscitation Sciences, Department of Emergency Medicine , Perelman School of Medicine , University of Pennsylvania, and Xiaowei Xu, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine , appears in Molecular Cell .

The saying "fools rush in" may be true when it comes to sex and relationships, especially for women, according to a new Cornell study. Women who have sex early in a relationship are more likely to be dissatisfied later with the quality of the relationship, because sex may have greater symbolic value for women as an indicator of the relationship commitment than it does for men, the study suggests.

Our eyes may be our window to the world, but how do we make sense of the thousands of images that flood our retinas each day? Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have found that the brain is wired to put in order all the categories of objects and actions that we see. They have created the first interactive map of how the brain organizes these groupings.

When the hairs of the plant are wet, the ants' adhesive pads essentially aquaplane on the surface, making the insects lose grip and slip into the bowl of the pitcher. This is the first time that we have observed hairs being used by plants in this way, as they are typically used to make leaves water repellent." —Dr Ulrike Bauer An insect-trapping pitcher plant in Venezuela uses its downward pointing hairs to create a 'water slide' on which insects slip to their death, new research reveals.

Scientists have shown how the common fruit fly Drosophila, which possess similar electrophysiological and pharmacological properties as humans, could now be used to screen and develop new therapies for alcohol-related behavioural disorders and some genetic diseases. Researchers from the University's School of Physiology and Pharmacology have been using the fruit fly to study the effects of alcohol on a particular gene found within potassium channels in the brain.

19 Dec 2012 Researchers funded by Cancer Research UK have been looking at why new drugs called "MEK inhibitors”, which are currently being tested in clinical trials, aren't as effective at killing cancer cells as they should be. They discovered that MITF - a protein that helps cells to produce pigment but also helps melanoma cells to grow and survive - is able to provide cancer cells with a resistance to MEK inhibitors.

Men with more brothers than sisters may have faster swimming sperm and are more likely to have increased fertility according to new research carried out by experts from the University of Sheffield. Scientists from the University of Sheffield in collaboration with researchers at Brown University in America found a correlation between the swimming speed of a man's sperm and the number of brothers he has.

Health Technology Assessment is not 'pure science'. The drug industry is a key actor in the process of issuing recommendations" —Professor Larry King King and colleagues Piotr Ozieranski (University of Leicester) and Martin McKee (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine) found that multinational drug companies are deploying their massive financial resources to capture stakeholders at every stage of the process for the scientific recommendation of drugs in Poland.