While science tries to understand the stuff dreams are made of, humans, from cultures all over the world, continue to believe that dreams contain important hidden truths, according to newly published research. 

In six different studies, researchers surveyed nearly 1,100 people about their dreams. "Psychologists' interpretations of the meaning of dreams vary widely," said Carey Morewedge, an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University and the study's lead author. "But our research shows that people believe their dreams provide meaningful insight into themselves and their world."

Six studies published in the past year by a Cornell researcher add to growing evidence that an apple a day -- as well as daily helpings of other fruits and vegetables -- can help keep the breast-cancer doctor away. 

In one of his recent papers, published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry (57:1), Rui Hai Liu, Cornell associate professor of food science and a member of Cornell's Institute for Comparative and Environmental Toxicology, reports that fresh apple extracts significantly inhibited the size of mammary tumors in rats -- and the more extracts they were given, the greater the inhibition. 

Contrary to the TV sitcom where the wife experiencing strong labor pains screams at her husband to stay away from her, women rarely give birth alone. Today, there are typically doctors, nurses and husbands in hospital delivery rooms, and sometimes even other relatives and friends. Midwives often are called on to help with births at home.  

Assisted birth has likely been around for millennia, possibly dating as far back as 5 million years ago when our ancestors first began walking upright, according to University of Delaware paleoanthropologist Karen Rosenberg.  She says that social assistance during childbirth is just one aspect of our evolutionary heritage that makes us distinctive as humans.

U.S. intelligence officials have spent more than seven years searching for Osama bin Laden but UCLA geographers say that, if he is still alive, they have a good idea of where he was at the end of 2001 — and perhaps where he has been in the years since. 

Cancer cells need a lot of nutrients to multiply and survive. While much is understood about how cancer cells use blood sugar to make energy, not much is known about how they get other nutrients. Now, researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have discovered how the Myc cancer-promoting gene uses microRNAs to control the use of glutamine, a major energy source. The results, which shed light on a new angle of cancer that might help scientists figure out a way to stop the disease, appear Feb. 15 online at Nature.

Without formalized sign language instruction, deaf children in families develop their own language using simple gestures that become more complex over time.     Unless they are gather in large groups, those specific deaf languages can result in thousands of dialects, called 'homesigns' by researchers.

There may be thousands of homesigners in a given society.    Marie Coppola, postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, Illinois, says her work with four Nicaraguan homesigners shows how such individual gesture systems likely provided the raw materials for the language that emerged in a school for the deaf there.