They say we can't escape our past--no matter how much we change, we still have the memory of what came before; the same can be said of our cells.

Adult cells, such as skin or blood cells, have a cellular "memory," or record of how the cell changes as it develops from an uncommitted embryonic cell into a specialized adult cell. Now, Harvard Stem Cell Institute researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in collaboration with scientists from the Research Institutes of Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA) and Molecular Pathology (IMP) in Vienna have identified genes that when suppressed effectively erase a cell's memory, making the cell more susceptible to reprogramming and, consequently, making the process of reprogramming quicker and more efficient.

An analysis of trials registered in ClinicalTrials.gov shows that the private sector is doing a lot more to advance pharmaceutical science than the government.

Don't be alarmed by that. Before a product can go to market, the manufacturer is required to prove safety and efficacy whereas government-funded trials are picked by a government committee and therefore not based on what may benefit the public. For that reason, it's not only good that the NIH is not funding a lot of trials, it's essential. Pharmaceuticals are one area of medicine that has not been taken over by government tinkering and if we look at the solar and wind industry, it is easy to see why it is better for everyone that the NIH stick to basic research.

Rats with restricted feeding schedules learn to eat more, helped by the "hunger hormone" ghrelin, according to new research from the University of Southern California.

The insights, to be published in the journal eLife, could be valuable for helping the researchers develop new effective weight-loss therapies.

"We are looking deep into the higher order functions of the brain to unpick not just which hormones are important for controlling our impulses but exactly how the signals and connections work," says lead author Scott Kanoski from the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

Australian researchers have discovered why some galaxies are "clumpy" rather than spiral in shape--and it appears low spin is to blame.

The finding challenges an earlier theory that high levels of gas cause clumpy galaxies and sheds light on the conditions that brought about the birth of most of the stars in the Universe.

Lead author Dr Danail Obreschkow, from The University of Western Australia node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), said that ten billion years ago the Universe was full of clumpy galaxies but these developed into more regular objects as they evolved.

People vary according to different personality traits, such as extraversion or conscientiousness, and new research suggests that they also vary according to a particular cognitive trait: distractibility. The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

"We all know from personal experience that some people appear to be more prone to lapses of attention than others. At the same time, we know that inattention and distractibility characterize people with a clinical diagnosis of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)," says study author Nilli Lavie of University College London.

Antarctica was once downright balmy, lush with plants and lakes, but not any time recently. Despite all of the climate change and global warming of the last few million years, the continent has been a barren, cold desert of ice.

What might we expect there in the future as Earth's atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide grows? More of the same. Antarctica's ancient lake deposits have remained frozen for at least the last 14 million years, suggesting that the surrounding region, the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, or EAIS, has likewise remained intact.