An area of the canine brain associated with reward responds more strongly to the scents of familiar humans than it does to the scents of other humans, or even to those of familiar dogs.

The journal Behavioural Processes published the results of the first brain-imaging study of dogs responding to biological odors. The research was led by Gregory Berns, director of the Center for Neuropolicy at Emory University.

CHESTNUT HILL, MA (March 17th): Workplace flexibility – it's a phrase that might be appealing to job seekers or make a company look good, but a new study by the Sloan Center on Aging and Work at Boston College shows flexible work options are out of reach for most employees and that when they are offered, arrangements are limited in size and scope.

University of Cincinnati researchers are reporting on the educational and health benefits of specially created outdoor play environments for children. Victoria Carr, a UC associate professor of education and director of the UC Arlitt Child and Family Research and Education Center, and Eleanor Luken, a former UC research associate for the Arlitt Center and current doctoral student at City University of New York, take a look at this growing trend around the world in an article published this month in the International Journal of Play.

We all feel stressed but a new paper finds that how we deal with it is different - even in as broad a category as men and women. Stressed women apparently become more "prosocial". 

A new study finds that sea anemones display a genomic landscape with a complexity of regulatory elements similar to that of fruit flies or other animal model systems, which suggests that this principle of gene regulation is already 600 million years old and dates back to the common ancestor of human, fly and sea anemone.

But sea anemones are more similar to plants rather to vertebrates or insects in their regulation of gene expression by short regulatory RNAs called microRNAs.  

Archaeologists have found the oldest complete example in the world of a human with metastatic cancer in a 3,000 year-old skeleton.