New molecules known as synthetic antibody mimics (SyAMs) attach themselves simultaneously to disease cells and disease-fighting cells. The result is a highly targeted immune response, similar to the action of natural human antibodies;  with both the targeting and response functions.

Games appear in galleries, does that make them art? blakespot, CC BY

By Ashok Ranchhod, University of Southampton and Vanissa Wanick Vieira, University of Southampton.

Mistletoe wasn't always for annoying co-workers at office parties, and it wasn't always just desperate men who think it has magical powers. In previous times, it was held in high regard because it was rootless, green and thriving when the tree it was on looked dead. Celtic druids latched onto it as some sort of supernatural fertility symbol - everything was a fertility symbol to druids - and it crept into popular culture from there.

Today we know it is simply a parasite, which isn't extending its use at office Christmas parties too far. 

Gun ownership in the United States has gone way up yet murders have plummeted. Though high-profile tragedies get mainstream media attention, the gun ban contingent has lost a lot of ground in culture. 

Lots of people say they care about their weight, and there is no end to weight-loss schemes available on websites, but if you ask nutritionists, personal trainers and even some doctors where fat goes when people lose weight, they can't tell you the right answer.

Caveat emptor. 

The most common misconception is that the missing mass has been converted into energy or heat. It's physics, after all. Except it isn't, not in the way they think it is. To lose 10 kilograms of fat requires 29 kilograms of oxygen for the body and that metabolic process produces 28 kilograms of carbon dioxide and 11 kilograms of water. It didn't convert to energy, you didn't "burn" fat.

Neapolitans have given fishmongers and celebrities alike a place at the nativity for hundreds of years. acetosa888, CC BY-SA

By Jessica Hughes, The Open University

There’s a scene in the film "Love Actually" where a little girl announces that she’ll be playing “first lobster” in the school nativity play. “There was more than one lobster present at the birth of Jesus?” asks her surprised mum – causing the girl to sigh in exasperation at such profound levels of parental ignorance.

A desire to be part of the 'in crowd' could damage our ability to make the right decisions, according to a paper in the
journal Interface which claims that individuals have evolved to be overly influenced by their neighbors, rather than rely on their own instinct.

As a result, they believe, groups become less responsive to changes in their natural environment. So much for the wisdom of crowds.

Divorce rates have gone down; the oft-cited 1970s statistic that 'half of all marriages end in divorce' was never really correct, but the belief that it was made divorce much more common.

More young people today are also avoiding divorce by avoiding marriage. As a result, more than half of all American children will have an unmarried mother - and regardless of all of the cultural whitewashing and rationalizations that cultural apologists engage in, the absence of a biological father increases the likelihood that a child will exhibit antisocial behaviors like aggression, rule-breaking and delinquency. Young boys in that environment are 40 percent less likely to finish high school or attend college, regardless of race.

Alas, for once I must say I am not completely happy of one new result by the CDF collaboration - the experiment to which I devoted 18 years of my research time, and where I learned almost everything I know about experimental particle physics.

Illegal aliens who have been deported from the United States are more than 2.5 times more likely to be rearrested after leaving jail, and are likely to be rearrested much more frequently than those who have never been removed, according to a new RAND Corporation analysis.

The new work bolsters federal immigration plans to focus immigration enforcement efforts on immigrants who previously have been removed, because they pose a bigger criminal threat.

The analysts looked at long-term recidivism rates among two groups of removable immigrants who had been released from the Los Angeles County jail: men who previously had been removed from the United States and men who had never been removed from the nation.