Humans would never agree that elections sometimes come down to looks.   Science disagrees.   Some argue that Barack Obama won because he looks younger and healthier than John McCain while others contend that having twice as much money makes any candidate more likely to win and about three people actually voted based on the issues.

A new report in the November 13th issue of Current Biology says that one species of fish picks its leaders in much the same way; most of the time they reach a consensus to go for the more attractive of two candidates. 

Two clones of highly antibiotic-resistant organism strains, which previously had only been identified in the United States, are now causing serious sickness and death in several Colombian cities including the capital Bogotá, say researchers at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston. The study, done in collaboration with Universidad El Bosque in Bogotá, is presented in a research letter published in the Nov. 13 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

An infrared camera aboard NASA's Cassini spacecraft has discovered a unique aurora lighting up Saturn's polar cap. The mysterious new aurora is unlike any other known in our solar system.

"We've never seen an aurora like this elsewhere," said Tom Stallard, an RCUK Academic Fellow working with Cassini data at the University of Leicester.  Stallard is lead author of a paper released today in the British journal Nature.  "It's not just a ring of aurorae like those we've seen at Jupiter or Earth. This one covers an enormous area across the pole. Our current ideas on what forms Saturn's aurorae predict that this region should be empty, so finding such a bright one here is a fantastic surprise."

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder(OCD) affects as much as 2 % of the population and is considered a psychiatric disorder. It is the number four psychiatric pathology in terms of frequency following phobias, disorders relating to alcohol and drugs, and depression.

People affected with OCD are obsessed with cleanliness, order, and symmetry or are overcome by doubts and irrational fears. In order to reduce their anxiety, they carry out rituals of tidying, washing or verification for several hours a day in the most serious cases.

The HPV vaccine, sold as Gardasil in the U.S., is intended to prevent four strains of the human papillomavirus, the most common sexually transmitted infection in the world. The vaccine also prevents against cervical cancer. While the vaccine represents a significant public health advance, a new article in the Journal of Law, Medicine&Ethics suggests that it is premature for states to currently mandate the HPV vaccine as a condition for school attendance.

Gail Javitt, J.D., M.P.H., Deena Berkowitz, M.D., M.P.H., and Lawrence O. Gostin, J.D., LL.D., review the scientific evidence supporting Gardasil's approval and the legislative actions in the states that followed and raise several concerns about state mandates for HPV vaccination. 

A team of Princeton University scientists say they have discovered that chains of proteins found in most living organisms act like adaptive machines, possessing the ability to control their own evolution.  They say the research appears to offer evidence of a hidden mechanism guiding the way biological organisms respond to the forces of natural selection and provides a new perspective on evolution, the scientists said.