Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have compiled the first-ever review of the neurobiology of wisdom – once the sole province of religion and philosophy. The study by Dilip V. Jeste, MD, and Thomas W. Meeks, MD, of UC San Diego's Department of Psychiatry and the Stein Institute for Research on Aging, was published in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

Wisdom has been defined over centuries and civilizations to encompass numerous psychological traits. Components of wisdom are commonly agreed to include such attributes as empathy, compassion or altruism, emotional stability, self-understanding, and pro-social attitudes, including a tolerance for others' values.

With climate change looming, the hunt for places that can soak up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is on.

Obvious "sinks" for the greenhouse gas include the oceans and the enormous trees of tropical rainforests. But temperate forests also play a role, and new research now suggests they can store more carbon than previously thought.

In a study that drew on both historical and present-day datasets, Jeanine Rhemtulla of McGill University and David Mladenoff and Murray Clayton of University of Wisconsin-Madison quantified and compared the above-ground carbon held in the forest trees of Wisconsin just prior to European settlement and widespread logging, and the total carbon they contain today.

The genetic toolkit that animals use to build fins and limbs is the same genetic toolkit that controls the development of part of the gill skeleton in sharks, according to research published in PNAS by Andrew Gillis and Neil Shubin of the University of Chicago, and Randall Dahn of Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory.

Contrary to common belief, softball pitching subjects the biceps to high forces and torques when the player's arm swings around to release the ball, according to an analysis of muscle firing patterns conducted at Rush University Medical Center.

Published in the current issue of the American Journal of Sports Medicine, the study of the "windmill" pitching motion appears to explain the high incidence of anterior shoulder pain seen in female softball players.

"The conventional belief has been that the underhand throwing motion of softball places little stress on the arm," said Dr. Nikhil Verma, lead author and a specialist in sports medicine at Rush. "But that is not the case."

Docosahexanoic acid (DHA), an omega-3 fatty acid found in fish oils, has been shown to reduce the size of tumours and enhance the positive effects of the chemotherapy drug cisplatin, while limiting its harmful side effects. The rat experiments described in Cell Division provide some additional support for the health benefits often ascribed to omega-3 acids.

Professor A. M. El-Mowafy led a team of researchers from Mansoura University, Egypt, who studied DHA’s effects on solid tumours growing in mice, as well as investigating how this fatty acid interacts with cisplatin, a chemotherapy drug that is known to cause kidney damage.

A new University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine study will examine whether women at higher risk of breast cancer can use exercise to meaningfully reduce their risk of getting the disease.  Starting from a premise that reducing estrogen in the body reduces cancer risk, and that elite female athletes experience a drop in estrogen levels that often cause them to stop ovulating and menstruating, the Women in Steady Exercise Research (WISER) Sister trial will investigate two different levels of regular treadmill exercise as a possible intervention for breast cancer risk reduction.