Stem cell research is a major challenge for medicine. Recently, asymmetric cell division was filmed in vivo in fruit fly germinal stem cells for the first time by the team of Jean-René Huynh at the Institut Jacques Monod (CNRS/Université Paris Diderot), now working at the ‘Génétique du développement et cancer' laboratory (Institut Curie/CNRS/UPMC/Inserm). This paper on stem cell behavior was published in Nature Cell Biology.

When you are concentrating on something, neural "noise" may cause you to miss important changes in your environment, new research indicates, and this binocular rivalry which occurs when the two eyes view radically different images means the brain temporarily rejects, or suppresses, one of those images in favor of the other.

The image that commands our visual awareness switches between the two over time. This fluctuation in visual awareness enables cognitive neuroscientists to study the neural correlates of awareness and consciousness.

According to results of a study published in Cancer Prevention Research,  men with prostate cancer who consumed the active compounds in green tea demonstrated a significant reduction in serum markers predictive of prostate cancer progression. 

Green tea is the second most popular drink in the world, and some epidemiological studies have shown health benefits with green tea, including a reduced incidence of prostate cancer, according to Cardelli.

However, some human trials have found contradictory results. The few trials conducted to date have evaluated the clinical efficacy of green tea consumption and few studies have evaluated the change in biomarkers, which might predict disease progression.

Sperm bigger than the actual creator of the sperm and phallic mushrooms have been all the rage this week, but immobilized microbes that can break down potentially harmful Phthalic Acid Esters (PAEs), commonly known as phthalates, are big news too, according to researchers writing in the International Journal of Environment and Pollution.   So now we get to talk about phthalic symbols.

Plagued by jet lag?   If we can send a rocket to the moon why can't we figure out how to fly to different time zones and still be fresh?  Researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital and the University of Michigan say they have developed a software program that prescribes a light exposure regimen for avoiding jet lag.

Renate Matzke-Karasz from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich  has led an international team of scientists who are studying sperm specimens from the London Natural History Museum’s collections. Their research has revealed fossilized evidence for reproduction using giant sperm in a group of small aquatic crustaceans, called ostracods, dating back to 100 million years ago.