Up to 20 percent of infertile couples in America have unknown reasons for their infertility but researchers led by Catherine Racowsky, PhD, director of the Assisted Reproductive Technologies Laboratory at Brigham and Women's Hospital, wants to fill in that blank, and hints that it could be exposure to Bisphenol-A (BPA). 

Oxytocin, called the 'love hormone' in popular accounts, affects men and women differently in social contexts, say a group of psychologists. In men it improves the ability to identify competitive relationships whereas in women it facilitates the ability to identify kinship.

Oxytocin is released in our bodies in various social situations. Our bodies release it at highwe levels during positive social interactions such as falling in love, experiencing an orgasm or giving birth and breastfeeding and in previous papers, 
Prof. Simone Shamay-Tsoory from the Dept. of Psychology at the University of Haifa

Raising fish in tanks  doesn't help them all that much when they are released into the wild - but there may be an easy fix: put in hiding places and obstacles. It makes fish smarter and improves their chances of survival in nature, according to a new paper.

Why does that matter? Because conservation fish hatcheries raise cod, salmon, trout and other types of fish and release them in places where their species may be threatened, or where their populations are declining.  

Astronomers have found a new way of measuring the spin in supermassive black holes. By viewing optical, ultra-violet and soft x-rays generated by heat as the black hole fed, they were able to measure how far the disc was from the black hole. 

Researchers have devised a way to measure the internal properties of stars, a method that offers more accurate assessments of their orbiting planets. 

The astronomers examined HD 52265, a star  nearly 20 percent more massive than our Sun
 that is approximately 92 light years away. More than a decade ago, scientists identified an exopanet in the star's orbit. HD 52265 became an ideal model for both measuring stars' properties and how such properties can shed light on planetary systems.

Previously, scientists inferred stars' properties, such as radius, mass, and age, by considering observations of their brightness and color. Often these stars' properties were not known to sufficient accuracy to further characterize the nearby planets.

A statistical model based on risk factors says it can predict the probability (absolute risk) of a woman developing breast, ovarian, and endometrial (womb) cancer using easily obtainable information on known risk factors for these cancers.