We don't often think of snakes as flying creatures - a lack of wings does not lend itself to flying imagery - but some snakes can glide as far as 100 feet through the air, jumping off tree branches and rotating their ribs to flatten their bodies and move from side to side.

New research from a George Washington University professor investigates the workings behind the flight and whether they can be applied to mechanical issues.

A nationwide project to study the genetic causes of rare developmental disorders has found 12 causative genes that were unidentified before. The Deciphering Developmental Disorders (DDD) nationwide genome-wide diagnostic sequencing program sequenced DNA and compared the clinical characteristics of over a thousand children to find the genes responsible for conditions that include intellectual disabilities and congenital heart defects, among others. 

Bisphosphonates are medications commonly used to treat osteoporosis and other bone conditions but a new analysis suggests that women who use bisphosphonates also have about half the risk of developing endometrial cancer as women who don't use the drugs. 

Endometrial cancer, which arises in the lining of the uterus, accounts for nearly 50 percent of gynecologic cancers diagnosed in the United States, and it is the fourth most common malignancy in women and the eighth most common cause of cancer death.

While bisphosphonates are known to prevent bone loss, preclinical studies have shown that the medications also have antitumor effects, including the ability to keep tumor cells from multiplying and from invading normal tissues.

The researchers at the Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute discovered that the ties which lash cells together - controlled by a protein called TIAM1 - are chopped up when cell maintenance work goes wrong.

People who occupy the extreme ends of the political spectrum, be they liberals or conservatives, are less influenced by outside information bias than political moderates, according to psychologists.

The research used a simple estimation task and was conducted by psychologists Mark J. Brandt and Anthony Evans of Tilburg University and Jarret T. Crawford of The College of New Jersey. They hold that because political extremists see their own beliefs as superior to the beliefs of others, they are more resistant to so-called anchor bias, even for non-political information.

In the mid-1960s the Elizabethan morality play space western known as "Star Trek" debuted and series creator Gene Roddenberry was cagey about when exactly it took place (thus the reason to use 'star dates'), but it had to have been in the 23rd century if later writers were getting their information relayed correctly.  Regardless of the exact dates of their five year mission, the public was energized by the future - and the gadgets it contained.

Portable computers were completely believable and wireless communications already existed. A fax machine was clearly on the horizon, since the teletype had already existed since 1915 and a fax just required a phone line - but medical diagnosis was not even close to "Star Trek"'s future yet.