Scientists at the University of Virginia and the Medical College of Wisconsin have discovered that a gene that participates in the regulation of the body’s biological rhythms may also be a major control in regulating metabolism.

Their finding shows that mice lacking the gene Nocturnin, which is regulated by the circadian clock in the organs and tissues of mammals, are resistant to weight gain when put on a high fat diet and also are resistant to the accumulation of fat in the liver. This new understanding of weight gain could potentially lead to therapies for inhibiting obesity and for treating its effects on health.

How much money would it take to get you to stick a pin into your palm? How much to stick a pin into the palm of a child you don’t know? How much to slap a friend in the face (with his or her permission) as part of a comedy skit? Well, what about slapping you father (with his permission) as part of a skit? How you answer questions such as these may reveal something about your morality, and even your politics — conservatives, for example, tend to care more about issues of hierarchy and respect, while liberals concentrate on caring and fairness.

People who do well on a series of decision-making tasks involving hypothetical situations tend to have more positive decision outcomes in their lives, according to a study by decision scientists at Carnegie Mellon University and the RAND Corp.

The results suggest that it may be possible to improve the quality of people’s lives by teaching them better decision-making skills.

Yes, there are gender differences in cognitive function, but they're more limited than previously thought. And yes, income does affect cognitive performance – but less than expected when only healthy children are considered. And while basic cognitive skills steadily improve in middle childhood, they then seem to level off – questioning the idea of a burst of brain development in adolescence.

These findings, published online on May 18 in the Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, are the first data to emerge from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) MRI Study of Normal Brain Development, a large, population-based study that began in 1999 and is documenting structural brain development and behavior from birth to young adulthood.

The James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) on Mauna Kea in Hawaii has a new way to look at the Universe, thanks to two revolutionary instruments called HARP and ACSIS. These instruments operate together, and they recently sliced through the Orion Nebula, recording for the first time the internal movements of its star-forming gases.

By applying the techniques of computer engineering to a mechanistic diagram describing the development of the Nematode C. elegans, a group of researchers in Switzerland has been able to tease out what laboratory experiments have not – how and when the crucial cross-talk between cellular signaling pathways takes place in order to determine the fates of individual cells.