In a very severe, genetic form of microcephaly, stem cells in the brain fail to divide, according to a new Columbia University Medical Center study that may provide important clues to understanding how the Zika virus affects the developing brain.

The study was published August 24 in Nature Communications.

Due to the Zika virus, the world is suffering from its first known epidemic of microcephaly, a devastating brain developmental condition that substantially reduces the number of neurons in the brain, along with brain size and function at birth.

Just another short post on Nibiru following on from my recent petition calling for responsible mainstream journalist reporting on "doomsday stories". It's featuring in many mainstream news sites again. Thank goodness one paper, the Independent, has run a straight hoax debunking story on it. "‘Blood moon’ and ‘rogue planet Nibiru’ are on their way to kill us all, conspiracy theorists wrongly claim", kudos to them. Hurrah! It's the first straightforward Nibiru debunking article I've seen in the mainstream newspapers in the last year (since I started writing these articles). I hope this is a start of a new trend.

Bacteria that cause tuberculosis, leprosy and other diseases, survive by switching between two different types of metabolism. EPFL scientists have now discovered that this switch is controlled by a mechanism that constantly adapts to meet the bacterium's survival needs, like a home's thermostat reacting to changes in temperature.

When we go hungry, we have the ability to ignore the urge to eat such that we can carry out the task at hand. It has long been known that the brain is involved in such decisions. But how the brain coordinates the response to nutritional stress so that the body can function normally is not understood very well. Now, researchers from the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bangalore, have discovered a brain circuit that allows fruit flies to take a major developmental step in their lives despite nutritional stress.

Are bees in peril or not? It's difficult to know, because the moment science declares one thing not an issue (example: neonicotinoid targeted pesticides), environmental groups move the goalposts and declare something else is the problem. When honey bees were shown to be unaffected, groups proposed that wild bees were the big concern, and if amateur record-keeping and a Bayesian estimate agrees, they declare the science settled. If a world-class entomologist does a good, controlled study of bees, it is ignored.

Fertility experts are calling on the companies who make the solutions in which embryos are cultured during in vitro fertilisation (IVF) to give a clear list of ingredients following publication of a trial that shows that the composition of these laboratory cultures affects the outcomes of the resulting embryos and babies.

The first randomised controlled trial (RCT) to look at the effect on perinatal outcomes of different IVF culture media found that they affected the numbers of viable embryos created, the rates of successful implantation in the womb, the pregnancy rates and the babies' birthweights.

Parents who directly and actively engage their children in healthy living behaviour - instead of passively 'supporting' the behaviour - are significantly more likely to see their kids meet Canadian guidelines when it comes to physical activity, healthy eating and screen time, new research from Public Health Ontario (PHO) has found.

The book "Anomaly! Collider Physics and the Quest for New Phenomena at Fermilab" is going to press as we speak, and its distribution in bookstores is foreseen for the beginning of November. In the meantime, I am getting ready to present it in several laboratories and institutes. I am posting here the coordinates of events which are already scheduled, in case anybody lives nearby and/or has an interest in attending.
- On November 29th at 4PM there will be a presentation at CERN (more details will follow).

SEATTLE, Wash. -- Pregnant women often rely on two identities -- a pregnant self and a non-pregnant self -- to help them navigate the profound psychological and physiological effects that pregnancy has on their body image, according to a Penn State Abington researcher.

"Women use various strategies to maintain a positive body image as they go through the pregnancy process," said David J. Hutson, assistant professor of sociology, Penn State Abington. "One of the strategies that came up multiple times during the interviews is that women maintain two distinct senses of self -- a sense of themselves as not pregnant and a sense of themselves as pregnant."

How do you boil water? Eschewing the traditional kettle and flame, MIT engineers have invented a bubble-wrapped, sponge-like device that soaks up natural sunlight and heats water to boiling temperatures, generating steam through its pores.

The design, which the researchers call a "solar vapor generator," requires no expensive mirrors or lenses to concentrate the sunlight, but instead relies on a combination of relatively low-tech materials to capture ambient sunlight and concentrate it as heat. The heat is then directed toward the pores of the sponge, which draw water up and release it as steam.