Around 165 million years ago, a bizarre parasite lived in the freshwater lakes of present-day Inner Mongolia - fly larva with a thorax formed entirely like a sucking plate.

With this odd thorax, the animal could adhere to salamanders and suck their blood with its mouthparts formed like a sting. To date no insect is known that is equipped with a similar specialised design. 

Mental fitness tools are all the rage. Companies are pushing out various brain games that claim they can boost cognitive powers. Do they work? Most studies say no but a new paper finds that playing a puzzle game like Cut the Rope for as little as an hour a day led to improved executive functions.

Executive functions in the brain are important for making decisions in everyday life when you have to deal with sudden changes in your environment – better known as thinking on your feet. An example would be when the traffic light turns amber and a driver has to decide in an instant if he will be able to brake in time or if it is safer to travel across the intersection.

We can't even define dark matter, other than it being some blanket term for something that must exist due to unexplainable gravitational influence on the movements and appearance of stars or galaxies. 

Based on indirect evidence, astronomers believe that dark matter is the dominant type of matter in the Universe – everything else has been conjecture. But astronomers using high-energy observatories believe they may have discovered a clue that hints at this elusive invisible ingredient. 

Some studies have suggested a link between cannabis use and schizophrenia, but it has remained unclear whether this association is due to cannabis directly increasing the risk of the disorder. 

Cannabis is the most widely used illicit drug in the world, and its use is higher amongst people with schizophrenia than in the general population. Schizophrenia affects approximately 1 in 100 people and people who use cannabis are about twice as likely to develop the disorder. The most common symptoms of schizophrenia are delusions (false beliefs) and auditory hallucinations (hearing voices). The exact cause is unknown. A combination of physical, genetic, psychological and environmental factors can make people more likely to develop the disorder.

Smartphones are everywhere, and they may tell something about you that you didn't realize could be told.

When we touch things we give it our 'germs' and that knowledge could tell researchers something about our personal microbial world. Our phones can be biological and environmental sensors.

It was once the case that computer security for users was a non-issue. Most break-ins of networks involved someone local, not a brute force password discovery. Now, remote hackers in China are constantly hammering US sites using automated tools.

Password security involves a trade-off; complex is good but too complex and people will write it down, which is bad. A new alternative called  'Facelock' is based on the psychology of face recognition.