Real-time brain scans coupled with a machine-learning algorithm can reveal whether a person has memory of a particular subject, but with a little bit of concentration people can easily hide their memories from the computer.

Memory is obviously important, in areas like eyewitness testimony, medicine and even marketing. Programs that can read a person's brain scan data and surmise whether that person is experiencing a memory could be important for those reasons.

But with just a little bit of coaching and concentration, subjects are easily able to obscure real memories, or even create fibs that look like real memories, on brain scans. For cooperative subjects, things are good, but for high-stakes situations knowing they can be spoofed is important.

Electronic devices that can be injected directly into the brain, or other body parts, have been a staple of science fiction for decades - and they seem a little closer to reality if you visit Charles Lieber's chemistry lab at Harvard. 

A team of international researchers, led by Lieber, has developed a method for fabricating nano-scale electronic scaffolds that can be injected via syringe. Once connected to electronic devices, the scaffolds can be used to monitor neural activity, stimulate tissues and even promote regenerations of neurons.  

In collaboration with the United States Department of Agriculture, the University of the Basque Country Department of Analytical Chemistry has identified the volatile compounds in damaged walnuts that insects find attractive and which is threatening the harvests of these nuts in California.

These are the first studies carried out on walnuts which are designed to specify the components of the aroma and which can be used to control the moth pests in the most sustainable way, besides helping to cut the use of pesticides and control agents. 

Food wasted means money wasted which can be an expensive problem especially in homes with financial constraints. A new study from the Cornell Food and Brand Lab and the Getulio Vargas Foundation, shows that the top causes of food waste in such homes include buying too much, preparing in abundance, unwillingness to consume leftovers, and improper food storage.

"Fortunately," notes lead author Gustavo Porpino, PhD candidate at the Getulio Vargas Foundation and Visiting Scholar at the Cornell Food and Brand Lab, "most of the factors that lead to food waste, can be easily remedied by simple changes in food buying, preparing, and storing."

A new psoriasis drug, ixekizumab , has resulted in 40 percent of people showing a complete clearance of psoriatic plaques after 12 weeks of treatment and over 90 percent showing improvement.

A psychologist and an English professor have written a review of studies and concluded that pigs perform as well as or better than dogs on some tests of behavioral and cognitive sophistication, and they compare favorably to chimpanzees.

The review by Emory psychologist Dr. Lori Marino and visiting English Professor Christina M. Colvin, seeks to extrapolate results to deduce what we do and do not know about pigs. The areas they discuss include cognition, emotion, self-awareness, personality and social complexity.

They conclude that “pigs possess complex ethological traits similar … to dogs and chimpanzees.” For example, pigs: