Within the nervous system there is a structure called the suprachiasmatic nucleus, a site considered as the biological clock in all mammals, including humans.

A new study has found that when this nucleus is damaged or destroyed the rhythm of the biological clock is lost.

Research by René Drucker and colleagues was performed in rats because they have well-defined activities at night that have little activity during the day. When some of these rats had neuronal alterations affecting their sleep cycle we could graph the amount of activity during the day and the night. So, when there was an injury that destroyed the suprachiasmatic nucleus, the pace and the biological clock was lost, and the animal equitably distributed its activity during the day and night.

Most vitamin supplements have little value to most people - if you can afford them your diet is probably already fine - but they have even less value in energy drinks and vitamin waters, despite how aggressively companies promote belief that they boost immune support and have antioxidant properties and whatever else.

Sensory 'hair cell' loss is the major cause of hearing loss and balance disorders. The postnatal mammalian inner ear harbors progenitor cells which have the potential for hair cell regeneration - and hearing recovery - but the mechanisms that control their proliferation and hair cell regeneration are yet to be determined. 

A new study has shown that blocking the Notch pathway, known to control the elaborate hair cell distribution in the inner ear, plays an essential role that determines cochlear progenitor cell proliferation capacity. 

Image: Jeff Kubina via flickr, CC BY 

BY Jyoti Madhusoodanan, Inside Science 

(Inside Science) -- Showers fall to Earth’s surface as rain, snow, sleet or hail. But high in the clouds, water molecules often begin to come together as tiny ice crystals that form around miniscule particles of dust. The microscopic crystals are big players in creating rain and lightning, and also heat and cool the planet by bouncing sunlight off clouds.

Food for drug-resistant bacteria. AthanArk, CC BY-NC-ND

By Angelika Gründling, Imperial College London

By observing and surveying 30 cool solar-type stars in the 2.5 Billion-year-old cluster NGC 6819 an international research team has created an analytical procedure for accurately determining the ages of stars with knowledge of their masses and rotation periods. 

 This "gyrochronology",  a neologism of co-author Sydney Barnes, has been shown to work over a wide age range, significantly improving the accuracy of stellar age determination.

"The relationship between mass, rotation rate and age of the observed stars is now defined well enough that by measuring the first two parameters, the third, the star's age, can be determined with only 10 percent uncertainty," said Barnes.

For fruit crops such as apples, compromised skin appearance results in reduced market value. Identifying causes of fruit disorders and diseases can help producers modify growing strategies and increase profits and so researchers in Germany recently released a study of "skin spot", a disorder found in 'Elstar' and occasionally in 'Golden Delicious' apples. It is characterized by patches of small brownish dots that usually appear on the apples' skin after the fruit is moved from storage.

Staying active allows you to age optimally, according to a small study in The Journal of Physiology which analyzed older amateur cyclists and found that many had levels of physiological function that would place them at a much younger age compared to the general population. The authors say this debunks the common assumption that aging automatically makes you more frail than younger people.

The researchers recruited 84 male and 41 female cycling enthusiasts aged 55 to 79 to explore how the aging process affects the human body, and whether specific physiological markers can be used to determine your age.

Solidarity with France and Charlie Hebdo in Taipei Pichi Chuang/Reuters

By Lucas Hollister, Dartmouth College

In his 1998 novel, The Elementary Particles, Michel Houellebecq argued that Charlie Hebdo played a pivotal role in the redefinition of social values in post-1968 France.

The political football of illegal immigrants from Mexico and Central America is well-known but a new study has found that even immigrants with job offers are less likely to have those immigration requests granted - if they are from Latin America,