Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease) is in the popular media because celebrities are dumping buckets of ice on their heads to raise awareness. Researchers probably wish they would donate money to research rather than raising awareness and hoping someone else donates money rather than dumping water on their heads too, but all medical outreach is good medical outreach.

Researchers at Mayo Clinic and The Scripps Research Institute in Florida have done something a little more practical; they developed a new therapeutic strategy to combat the most common genetic risk factor for ALS and frontotemporal dementia. 

Scientists have altered key biological events in red blood cells, causing the cells to produce a form of hemoglobin normally absent after the newborn period.

Because this hemoglobin is not affected by the inherited gene mutation that causes sickle cell disease, the cell culture findings may give rise to a new therapy for the debilitating blood disorder. Their approach uses protein-engineering techniques to force chromatin fiber, the substance of chromosomes, into looped structures that contact DNA at specific sites to preferentially activate genes that regulate hemoglobin. 

The cytoplasm of mammalian cells is a viscous fluid, with organelles and proteins jiggling against one another and drifting at random.

Yet a new biophysical study finds that those drifting objects are subject to a very different type of environment than what we have thought.

The cytoplasm is actually an elastic gel, it turns out, so it puts up some resistance to simple diffusion. But energetic processes elsewhere in the cell—in the cytoskeleton, especially—create random but powerful waves in the cytoplasm, pushing on proteins and organelles alike. Like flotsam and jetsam buffeted by the wakes of passing ships, suspended particles scatter much more quickly and widely than they would in a calm sea.

Tokyo is a city of more than 13 million people and they are no strangers to earthquakes. The city, like much of Japan, has been devastated by earthquakes in the past and likely will be again - but when?

Ongoing slow-slip earthquakes can't usually be felt at the surface but they play a role in relieving or building up geological stress and recent research examining plate movements under Tokyo has found that, since the massive magnitude-9 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in March 2011, recurrence intervals for non-damaging slow-slip quakes beneath Japan's capital have shortened. 

This has led some seismologists to wonder if this aseismic creep could be signaling a countdown to Tokyo's next "big one."

Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) are adult stem cells isolated from blood or bone marrow that can renew themselves and differentiate into a variety of specialized cells. They give rise to all other blood cell types but their development has long remained a mystery.

In a new paper, researchers elaborate upon a crucial signaling pathway and the role of key proteins, which may help clear the way to generate HSCs from human pluripotent precursors, similar to advances with other kinds of tissue stem cells.  

Not popular on Twitter? You may think it's because you're too honest. Unless you are a celebrity, popularity instead seems to come from conforming to social norms and expectations, so science journalists will complain about Republicans a lot, entertainment journalists will pretend to care about the Kardashians and New York Times journalists will pretend they like having spontaneous social media participation in their job descriptions.

Given the perceived importance of social media, it's no surprise Aalto University found that users admitted faking parts of their online image in order to conform to social norms and expectations. But in looking at Facebook and Last.fm, they instead came to the conclusion that being real is much more acceptable according to social norms.

There are positive aspects of work but some people are unable to detach from it – they work excessively and compulsively. They are workaholics; not like the kind of people who use the term because they work a lot and self-diagnose with psychological fads on an annual basis, but truly compulsive

If you've ever spent any time watching a gecko, you've been impressed by their uncanny ability to adhere to any surface - including upside down on ceilings. 

A new study in the Journal of Applied Physics reveals that  the little lizards can turn the "stickiness" of toe hairs on the bottom of their feet on and off, which enables them to run at great speeds or even cling to ceilings without expending much energy.  Geckos, as well as spiders and insects, have independently evolved the same adhesion system mechanism and have been using it for millions of years. 

Injuries, birth defects and sometimes surgery to remove a tumor can create gaps in bone that are too large to heal naturally, and in the head, face or jaw, they can dramatically alter a person's appearance.

At the National Meeting&Exposition of the American Chemical Society, researchers presented details about a "self-fitting" material that expands with warm salt water to precisely fill bone defects, and also acts as a scaffold for new bone growth.

Researchers at the University of Montreal and CHU Sainte-Justine Research Centre have traced the origins of Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), substance abuse and conduct disorder, and found that they develop from the same neurocognitive deficits, which might explain why they often occur together.

The findings were established by studying the reward sensitivity and decision making patterns of 1,778 European 14-year-olds of comparable demographic profile. The teens were asked to undertake several tasks while undergoing an MRI and answer personality questionnaires. Clinicians also profiled the participants, once at the time of the testing, and again two years later.