Modern smartphones are wonderful devices - they let us check email we won't reply to until we get to a desktop, they take pictures and sometimes they even make a poor quality phone call.

But that convenience comes with a price: it is easy to avoid thinking for ourselves, was a caution. And it is warranted, finds a paper in Computers in Human Behavior, which suggests that smartphone users who are intuitive thinkers, more prone to relying on gut feelings and instincts when making decisions, frequently use their device's search engine rather than their own brainpower.

Every fertility specialist seeks to design the most effective treatment strategy possible for each couple seeking to become pregnant. Treatment is usually a complex process and fertility drugs are often part of the regimen. Along with the benefits of such drugs, however, come risks such as multiple gestation or pregnancy.

People with diabetes are more prone to anxiety and depression than those with other chronic diseases that require similar levels of management. The reasons for this aren't well understood, but Joslin Diabetes Center researchers have discovered one potential explanation.

Genetically modifying mice to make their brains resistant to insulin, the Joslin scientists first found that the animals exhibited behaviors that suggest anxiety and depression, and then pinpointed a mechanism that lowers levels of the key neurotransmitter dopamine in areas of the brain associated with those conditions.

Here's the rub with friction -- scientists don't really know how it works. Sure, humans have been harnessing the power of friction since rubbing two sticks together to build the first fire, but the physics of friction remains largely in the dark.

In a new paper in Nature Materials, Brandeis University professor Zvonomir Dogic and his lab explored friction at the microscopic level. They discovered that the force generating friction is much stronger than previously thought. The discovery is an important step toward understanding the physics of the cellular and molecular world and designing the next generation of microscopic and nanotechnologies.

The research was conducted as part of the Brandeis University Materials Research Science and Engineering Center.

An Australian study found certain elite athletes were more at risk of taking drugs than others. Credit: Lee Morley, CC BY-NC-ND

There’s a widespread public perception that substance use is rife among Australian athletes. Whenever I tell people I research substance use among athletes, the most common response is: “They’re all on it.”

Northern gannets avoid buckling their necks by choosing the right diving speed. Credit: Jean-Jacques Boujot

By Ben Stein, Inside Science

(Inside Science Currents Blog) -- Animals perform many feats that are remarkable once you think about them. Here’s one that I never previously contemplated: seabirds dive into the water to capture fish at seemingly breakneck speeds — yet their necks are completely unharmed.

No doubt Lance Armstrong is still digesting the news that he has to repay $10 million (£6.4m) to previous sponsors following a ruling by an arbitration panel a few weeks ago.

This is on top of the lifetime ban from all sporting competitions that he was given several years back.

In a study of 2,609 patients from a pediatric intensive care unit in a children's hospital in Spain, investigators found that more boys than girls were admitted (57.5% vs. 42.5%) but death rates were higher in girls (4.9% vs. 3.3%).

Girls died from a broader range of causes while boys died most often from respiratory and polytraumatic injuries, which could reflect an increased likelihood to engage in risky activities or behave more carelessly, the authors conclude.

"The unexpected female vulnerability that we have found could be partly explained by differences in age and occurrence of nosocomial infection," said Dr. Maria Esther Esteban, senior author of the American Journal of Human Biology study. "This should be explored in future research."

Rates of substance use are higher in people with mental health problems compared to the general population and particularly in people with bipolar disorder, with cannabis the street drug most frequently used.

A small experiment has found that people are quicker to categorize a face as being male when it is shown to the left side of the brain. 

The conclusion was drawn from an analysis of responses from 42 volunteers who were asked to focus on a cross in the center of a computer screen. They were then shown faces, which were morphed from 100 percent male to 100 percent female across 280 trials, and were asked to categorize the faces as either female or male as quickly as possible. 

When an image was presented to the left side of the brain, it was generally considered more male, even though it was correctly perceived as more female when presented to the right side of the brain.