The body's ability to break down medicines may be closely related to exposure to sunlight, according to a study from the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet.   This could mean drug metabolism is influenced by seasons and might explain individual differences in the effects of drugs, and how the surroundings can influence the body's ability to deal with toxins.

The deadly Russian heat wave of 2010 was due to a natural atmospheric phenomenon often associated with weather extremes, according to a new study accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters. 

A new study in Proceedings of the Royal Society B says it is the first to demonstrate that birds possess empathy - and they say they have verified it using both behavioral and physiological methods to measure these traits.

Using non-invasive physiological monitoring, the researchers say domestic hens show a clear physiological and behavioral response to their chicks' distress.   During one of the controlled experiments, when the baby chicks were exposed to a puff of air, the hens' heart rate increased and eye temperature decreased. The hens also changed their behavior and reacted with increased alertness, decreased preening and increased vocalizations directed to their chicks.

The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are losing mass at an accelerating pace, according to a new study in Geophysical Research Letters. The authors suggest these ice sheets are overtaking ice loss from Earth's mountain glaciers and ice caps to become the dominant contributor to global sea level rise.

If you want to win the NCAA College Basketball Tournament office pool and know nothing about basketball, the good news is you have just as much chance as devoted college basketball fans unless you get all crazy about it.   

One solution is to try and play it safe by picking all the top seeds in the brackets to make it to the Final Four and then using a back-azimuth strategy to determine the winners among the early games.   But upsets are almost a guarantee in the NCAA Tournament.   So what is the optimum strategy for people without a clue?

Mendeley, which bills itself as the world's largest crowd-sourced research database, today announced the Mendeley API Binary Battle, challenging developers to build an application on top of Mendeley's open database of over 70 million research papers, usage statistics, reader demographics, social tags, and related research recommendations.

The prize?  $10,001. 

Modeled after Last.fm, Mendeley seeks to use its social reference manager and collaboration platform to make research more productive and transparent. This challenge is all about creating applications that open up its academic data to others.