No matter where we are on the political spectrum, we all have the same underlying goals and behaviors: The pursuit of happiness, the American dream etc. This is, at the very least, the way psychologists had viewed political ideology for quite some time. However, new research may have identified the characteristics that lead us to lean ideologically to the left or right and it may be genetic.

For the first time anywhere, a researcher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has succeeded in observing in vivo the generation of neurons in the brain of a mammal.

Early-stage research has found that a new gene therapy can nearly eliminate arthritis pain, and significantly reduce long-term damage to the affected joints, according to a study published today in the journal Arthritis and Rheumatism.

While the study was done in mice, they are the first genetically engineered to develop osteoarthritis like humans, with the same genetic predisposition that makes some more likely to develop the disease, the authors said. If all goes well with a follow-up study currently underway, researchers will apply to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for permission to begin human trials next year.

Certain army ants in the rainforests of Central and South America conduct spectacular predatory raids containing up to 200,000 foraging ants. Remarkably, some ants use their bodies to plug potholes in the trail leading back to the nest, making a flatter surface so that prey can be delivered to the developing young at maximum speed.

Rains are back, and we hardly remember how dry it was a couple of weeks ago. Usually, we do not associate moist tropical forests with drought, but during the ‘verano' it gets astonishingly dry in most Panamanian lowland forests, just as in many tropical forests worldwide: Plants suffer from drought, they grow slower, wilt and even die.

Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have demonstrated a novel way of making atoms interfere with each other, recreating a famous experiment originally done with light while also making the atoms do things that light just won't do.

Their experiments showcase some of the extraordinary behavior taken for granted in the quantum world—atoms acting like waves and appearing in two places at once, for starters—and demonstrate a new technique that could be useful in quantum computing with neutral atoms and further studies of atomic hijinks.