Pets play an important role in our social lives and they can act as catalysts for social interaction, previous research has shown, because pets often serve as "social lubricants."

Although much media attention has focused on how dogs can improve the social skills of children with autism, a University of Missouri researcher recently found that children with autism have stronger social skills when any kind of pet lived in the home.

Some people have the appearance of a young shape even as they age. Good genes and clean living, it is said. But the nature and nurture argument has a new companion - historical context - at least in sociology.

A new study claims evidence that the role of genetics in complex traits, including obesity, varies over time. Both the era in which scientific research is conducted and the era in which subjects were born may have an impact on the degree to which genetic factors are present in scientific data. 

A thin sheet of graphene wrapped around a new multifunctional sulfur electrode that combines an energy storage unit and electron/ion transfer networks could lead to a promising design for rechargeable lithium-sulfur batteries.

Lithium-sulfur batteries are of great commercial interest because they boast theoretical specific energy densities considerably greater than those of their already-well-established cousin, lithium ion batteries. And we clearly need battery improvements, there hasn't been anything substantial for 25 years.

A new research effort is focused on nanostructured materials with biocompatible and antibacterial properties. Ana Maria Arizmendi Morquecho, scholar at the Research Center for Advanced Materials (Cimav) in Mexico, says that the challenge is to find appropriate measures to improve the compatibility of a metal structure with the chemical composition of bone tissue and human bone’s nanostructures.

Materials have to be resistant to wear, they need improved mechanical properties and they need to be compatible with the human body while abiding with public health requirements. Knees are a good place to make advances since knee problems are common and real-world data has been available for decades.

It would be madness today to think of farmers as wimpy - watching a 160 lb. kid throw a giant hay bale around does not make people think of weakness - but skeletally the invention of agriculture made us weak compared to foraging ancestors.

As we shifted from foraging to farming, we had more food and that led to more culture and education and progress - but it also brought more sedentary lifestyles and so our skeletons have become much lighter and more fragile since the invention of agriculture.

Multiple sclerosis is a degenerative disease and most patients with RRMS who received disease-modifying therapies experience breakthrough disease. Autologous (using a patient's own cells) hematopoietic cell transplant (HCT) has been studied in multiple sclerosis with the goal of removing disease-causing immune cells and resetting the immune system.