Zombies are really popular - "...and zombies" attached to the end of well-established works of fiction have become a common trope and once they began to swarm over the literary canon, it was only a matter of time before English Lit academics began to overthink the phenomenon.

An international collaboration has discovered a novel receptor, which allows the immune system of modern humans to recognize dangerous invaders, and subsequently elicits an immune response. The blueprint for this advantageous structure was also identified in the genome of Neanderthals, hinting at its origin.

The receptor provided these early humans with immunity against local diseases. The presence of this receptor in Europeans but its absence in early men suggests that it was inherited from Neanderthals.

The government enjoyed tremendous success steering the goals of science in World War II and that continued during the NASA era. Since that time, government has exercised greater control of science through larger and larger pools of funding that have gradually supplanted corporate basic research.

But government control of funding has its downside; fashions in research funding (solar power now, before that), reward structures in universities that focus on government grants and streamlining of scientific agendas undermine traditional scientific norms and may even result in science bubbles.

This week, Americans officially start focusing on Christmas holiday celebrations and that means a lot of high-calorie food.

If you have ever wondered about why you can tap a newly opened beer bottle and its suds will foam out and go all over the place, researchers from Carlos III University and Universite Pierre et Marie Curie, Institut Jean le Rond d'Alembert have provided some insight - by exploring the phenomenon of cavitation. 

Cavitation, a phenomenon relevant to such common engineering concerns as erosion of ship propellers, is the mechanism by which bubbles appear in a liquid such as beer after an impact, said Javier Rodriguez-Rodriguez, the lead researcher from Carlos III University.

Though more and more women are given antidepressant medication while they are pregnant and there have been more diagnosed cases of autism, there is no connection between the use of antidepressant medication - SSRIs - during the course of pregnancy and the risk of having a child with autism.