Crohn's disease, a type of inflammatory bowel disease, is a condition that occurs when your body's immune system mistakenly attacks and destroys healthy body tissue. The exact cause of Crohn's disease is unknown.  

A new report in the Journal of Leukocyte Biology shows for the first time precisely what type of immune cells are involved in driving the inflammation process in the disease. With this knowledge, new compounds can be identified which reduce the activity of these cells or lessen their inflammatory effects. 

Astronomers studying nearby galaxy M83 have found a new super-powered small black hole, named MQ1.

M83, the iconic Southern-sky galaxy, is being mapped with the Hubble Space and Magellan telescopes (detecting visible light), the Chandra X-ray Observatory (detecting light in X-ray frequencies), the Australia Telescope Compact Array and the Very Large Array (detecting radio waves).

Astronomers have found a few compact objects that are as powerful as MQ1, but have not been able to work out the size of the black hole contained within them until now.  The team observed the MQ1 system with multiple telescopes and discovered that it is a standard-sized small black hole, rather than a slightly bigger version that was hypothesized to account for all its power.

We often think of the migration of Asians into America as a event that occurred when the Bering Sea was lower: They basically went over the land bridge that existed, from one part to another.

Genetic and environmental evidence indicates instead that it was instead a conservative process and that they spent 10,000 years in shrubby lowlands on the broad land bridge that once linked Siberia and Alaska. 

University of Utah anthropologist Dennis O'Rourke and colleagues seek to reconcile existing genetic and environmental evidence for human habitation on the Bering land bridge – also called Beringia – with an absence of archaeological evidence.

Nobel laureate James D. Watson, the co-discoverer of the double-helix structure of DNA, has published a hypothesis on the causation of type 2 diabetes - that diabetes, dementias, cardiovascular disease, and some cancers are linked to a failure to generate sufficient biological oxidants, called reactive oxygen species (ROS).

Watson does not question that pancreatic tissue in people with type 2 diabetes is indeed inflamed. But he does present a novel theory of why. "The fundamental cause, I suggest, is a lack of biological oxidants, not an excess. The prevalent view of type 2 diabetes is that an excess of intracellular oxidation causes inflammation, which in turn kills cells in pancreatic tissue."

BOWLING GREEN, O.—They keep tanning, even after turning a deep brown and experiencing some of the negative consequences. Skin cancer is among the most common, preventable types of the disease, yet many continue to tan to excess.

Research from Lisham Ashrafioun, a Bowling Green State University Ph.D. student in psychology, and Dr. Erin Bonar, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Michigan Addiction Research Center and a BGSU alumna, shows that some who engage in excessive tanning may also be suffering from obsessive-compulsive (OCD) and body dysmorphic disorders (BDD). Ashrafioun and Bonar also looked at whether tanning should be classified as an addiction.

A paper published in EPJ H provides the first English translation and an analysis of one of Albert Einstein's little-known papers, "On the cosmological problem of the general theory of relativity." Published in 1931, it features a forgotten model of the universe, while refuting Einstein's own earlier static model of 1917. In this paper, Einstein introduces a cosmic model in which the universe undergoes an expansion followed by a contraction. This interpretation contrasts with the monotonically expanding universe of the widely known Einstein-de Sitter model of 1932.