When we think of genetically modified organisms, we usually picture the modern legal definition and a controversy related to how science can aid in herbicide tolerance and insect resistance, but there are other applications of such engineered plants, such as the incorporation of genes for specific nutrients.  Golden Rice is a famous example. Though it is protested by environmental groups, it has been shown to be able to help prevent blindness and death for millions of children.

A new paper suggests that similar bio-fortification of rice with a gene to produce more folate (vitamin B9) could significantly reduce the risk of spina bifida and other neural tube defect conditions caused by deficiency of this nutrient.

Neuroscientists have discovered brain circuitry for encoding positive and negative learned associations in mice. After finding that two circuits showed opposite activity following fear and reward learning, the researchers proved that this divergent activity causes either avoidance or reward-driven behaviors. 

Greenland climate during the last ice age was very unstable, the researchers say, characterized by a number of large, abrupt changes in mean annual temperature that each occurred within several decades. These so-called "Dansgaard-Oeschger events" took place every few thousand years during the last ice age. Temperature changes in Antarctica showed an opposite pattern, with Antarctica cooling when Greenland was warm, and vice versa.

When a crystal lattice is excited by a laser pulse, waves of jostling atoms can travel through the material at about 28,000 miles/second, close to one sixth the speed of light.

Now researchers can take movies of such superfast movement.

STAMP - Sequentially Timed All-optical Mapping Photography -  is a new high-speed camera that can record events at a rate of more than 1-trillion-frames-per-second, 1000X faster than conventional high-speed cameras. 

When consumers taste cheap wine and rate it highly because under the belief it is expensive, is it just a placebo or has belief actually changed their brain function, causing them to experience the cheap wine in the same physical way as the expensive wine? 

People enjoy identical products such as wine or chocolate more if they have a higher price tag so a new study examined the neural and psychological processes required for such marketing placebo effects to occur. The authors conclude that preconceived beliefs may create a placebo effect so strong that the actual chemistry of the brain changes in a brain imaging analysis.

The occurrence of altruism and spite - helping or harming others at a cost to oneself - depends on similarity not just between two interacting individuals but also to the rest of their neighbors, according to a new model developed by psychologist DB Krupp and mathematician Peter Taylor of Queen's University.

Individuals who appear very different from most others in a group will evolve to be altruistic towards similar partners, and only slightly spiteful to those who are dissimilar to them but individuals who appear very similar to the rest of a group will evolve to be only slightly altruistic to similar partners but very spiteful to dissimilar individuals, often going to extreme lengths to hurt them.