A medical researcher at the University of Warwick has found the 2,500 year-old Pythagoras theorem could be the most effective way to identify the point at which a patient's health begins to improve.

In a new paper, Dr Rob Froud from Warwick Medical School at the University of Warwick and Gary Abel from the University of Cambridge made the discovery after looking at data from ROC (Receiver Operating Characteristic) curves.

These curves were initially developed during World War II for the analysis of signals to help operators decide whether a blip on the screen was an enemy target or allied forces ships or aircrafts. In the 1980s, the curves were adopted by epidemiologists to help them decide at what point an individual has recovered from an illness.

Social scientists believe that pre-Homo human ancestral species, such as Australopithecus africanus, used human-like hand postures much earlier than was previously thought.

The authors say they have the first archaeological evidence for stone tool use among fossil australopiths 3-2 million years ago. The distinctly human ability for forceful precision (e.g. when turning a key) and power "squeeze" gripping (e.g. when using a hammer) is linked to two key evolutionary transitions in hand use: a reduction in arboreal climbing and the manufacture and use of stone tools. However, it is unclear when these locomotory and manipulative transitions occurred.

An analysis of marijuana-related Twitter messages sent during a one-month period in early 2014, shows that the "Twitterverse" is a pot-friendly place.

How friendly? 15X as many pro-pot Tweets as anti-pot ones among more than 7 million tweets referenced marijuana.

What is the explanation for that? People who don't smoke a lot of pot are likely at work while those sending and receiving pot tweets were under age 25, with many in their teens, a demographic group at increased risk for developing marijuana dependence and other drug-related problems. 

The Patriots ran away with the AFC Championship. What did deflated footballs have to do with it? USA Today Sports / Reuters

By Chad Orzel, Union College

Scientists have described a unique monoclonal antibody with the potential to treat Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) infections through the simultaneous neutralization of multiple key toxins produced by S. aureus, including alpha-hemolysin and four additional leukocidins. The findings are published online this week in the journal mAbs and demonstrate superior in vitro potency compared to antibodies targeting alpha-hemolysin alone. The mAb also shows high protective efficacy from lethal S. aureus infections in several animal models.

How is it that people can sometimes show such empathy when other times our ability to feel compassion seems to be in such short supply? A study published in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on January 15 shows that stress is a major factor.

A drug that blocks stress hormones increases the ability of college students and mice to "feel" the pain of a stranger, the study shows. That phenomenon, known as "emotional contagion of pain," is one form of empathy. In even better news, a shared round of the video game Rock Band worked just as well as the drugs among those undergrads.

Fortifying food with folic acid saves about 1,300 babies each year from serious birth defects of the brain and spine known as neural tube defects (NTDs), according to new data published by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.The number of babies born in the United States with these conditions has declined by 35 percent since 1998.

About 3,000 pregnancies in the U.S. still are affected by neural tube defects annually. The March of Dimes says that even with folic acid-fortified grain products, many women still may not be getting enough folic acid so they recommend that all women take vitamins containing folic acid, though only about one-third of women do.

Credit: Don Davis

By Claire Belcher, University of Exeter and Rory Hadden, University of Edinburgh

The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs set off an intense heat wave that briefly boiled the Earth’s atmosphere – but it didn’t burn off all the plants.

Literature scholars love to debate Shakespeare. Like 'the greatest baseball player of all time' everyone can have an opinion and they are all just as valid, if even a modicum of thought went into it.(1) He was real, he was not real, he was a fraud, he was the greatest writer of all time, he was a woman, you name it and someone in the humanities has argued for it. 

He was Catholic? Catholics say so, at least after the fact, but that evidence is circumstantial, like everything else except his writing.

Adult sea turtles find their way back to the beaches where they hatched by seeking out unique magnetic signatures along the coast, according to new evidence.

"Sea turtles migrate across thousands of miles of ocean before returning to nest on the same stretch of coastline where they hatched, but how they do this has mystified scientists for more than fifty years," says J. Roger Brothers of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. "Our results provide evidence that turtles imprint on the unique magnetic field of their natal beach as hatchlings and then use this information to return as adults."