Gout is a painful rheumatic condition. It occurs when uric acid, a bodily waste product, crystallizes in joints and soft tissues. Gout is often associated with the big toe, but that turns out to be unfair; patients at highest risk of further flare-ups are those whose gout first involved other joints, such as a knee or elbow, according to new research.

Researchers using magnetic imaging to assess memory  have shown that soccer players who frequently head the ball have brain abnormalities resembling those found in patients with concussion (mild traumatic brain injury).  

By outsourcing manufacturing to China - sending jobs Americans don't want, according to immigration experts - America is also outsourcing carbon dioxide emissions.

China is now doing the same thing, but to themselves. Coastal provinces are outsourcing emissions to poorer provinces in the interior, according to U.C. Irvine scholar Steve Davis and colleagues in a Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper.

With nuclear power trapped in committee meetings and biofuels exposed as a bad idea, the search for another carbon-neutral alternative is ongoing.

While the sun gives us enough energy in an hour to meet all human needs for a year, solar technologies are an ideal solution that needs better technology - just like it has been for 50 years.

Conversion of solar energy into electrochemical energy on a massive-scale first needs to show proof-of-concept on the micro-scale.  An artificial version of photosynthesis is regarded as one of the most promising of solar technologies because for two billion years nature has employed photosynthesis to oxidize water into molecular oxygen.

An experiment to probe brain circuits involved in compulsive behavior - where mice were bred missing a gene
suspected to be involved in compulsive behavior and obesity - resulted in offspring mice that were neither compulsive groomers nor obese.

Their Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) paper suggests that the brain circuits that control obsessive-compulsive behavior are intertwined with circuits that control food intake and body weight.  

University of Iowa psychiatrists Michael Lutter, M.D., Ph.D. and Andrew Pieper, M.D., Ph.D., led the study, which included researchers from Stanford University School of Medicine, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Harvard Medical School.

Though the mechanism responsible for generating part of the skeletal support for the membrane in animal cells is not yet understood, researchers have found a well-defined layer beneath the cell outer membrane forms beyond a certain critical level of stress generated by motor proteins within the cellular system.