The beggar's cup is empty. Hardly anybody cares about him. Despising side glances hurt, still hurt every time. A squirrel runs up the tree and goes for the best nut. Suddenly a calm understanding replaces the beggar’s bitterness. He walks into the mall where he usually steals, but today, he does not steal. He eats. Today, they care again, care about him, even give him respect. Today, he rejoined society.

Oxytocin, colloquially called the 'love hormone' because of its correlation to mother-infant attachment and romantic bonding in adults, could also make us more accepting of other people, according to a new psychology paper. 

Screening for colorectal cancer (CRC) in European countries is highly effective in reducing mortality from the disease. Some of the resources currently being devoted to breast and prostate screening programmes, where the evidence of effectiveness is much less clear-cut, should be reallocated to the early detection of CRC, the 2013 European Cancer Congress (ECC2013) [1] will hear today (Sunday).

The first Phase II study to investigate the use of the anti-cancer drug, everolimus, for the initial treatment of advanced papillary kidney cancer has shown that it is successful in slowing or preventing the spread of the disease, according to research to be presented today (Sunday) at the 2013 European Cancer Congress (ECC2013) [1].

 An old star, IRAS 15445-5449, is "blooming" in the southern sky — it has begun to push out a jet of charged particles that glow with radio waves. And astronomers are on the hunt to determine why 

Researchers recently used a laser to accelerate electrons at a rate 10 times higher than conventional technology in a nanostructured glass chip smaller than a grain of rice, an advance that could dramatically shrink particle accelerators for science and medicine.

 Because it employs commercial lasers and low-cost, mass-production techniques, the researchers believe it will set the stage for new generations of "tabletop" accelerators.

At its full potential, the new "accelerator on a chip" could match the accelerating power of SLAC's 2-mile-long linear accelerator in just 100 feet, and deliver a million more electron pulses per second.

Instead of letting them mess around on the Wii or, worse, watching a "Baby Einstein" video, the way to make kids of all ages and incomes smarter could be as simple as handing them a few blocks.

Playing with blocks may help preschoolers develop the kinds of skills that support later learning in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), according to a new study.

More than a hundred 3-year-olds of various socioeconomic levels took part in the study. Children who were better at copying block structures were also better at early math, the study found. Among the skills tested were whether children could figure out that a block belongs above or below another block and whether they aligned the pieces.

Streamers may be great for decorating a child's party, but in dielectrics they are the primary origin of electric breakdown and can cause catastrophic damage to electrical equipment, harm the surrounding environment, and lead to large-scale power outages. 

Understanding streamers and the mechanisms behind their initiation, acceleration and branching is necessary to devise better solutions to avoid them. A team of researchers at MIT have developed an accurate 3-D model of streamer propagation that qualitatively and quantitatively describes the streamer development, an advance that may impact applications such as medical imaging, aerospace engineering, power transmission, atmospheric sensing, natural sciences, sensing technologies and large-scale industry.

Since I retired three years ago, I have been becoming almost as sessile as a sea squirt, sitting in front of my computer, reading not just news but comment and what people are thinking about things.  Among the ‘things’, women’s equality is very much to the front these days.

Unless you are in a bar and have a bartender with a pour spout (in other words, a terrible bar), pouring a glass of wine is not an exact measurement. And at a private party or in someone's house, a 'glass of wine' can be more like three - if you master the psychology of wine glasses.

We're in a world of over-labeling. Everything has calories printed on it, warnings about cancer and claims about gluten-free meat and GMO-free rock salt being healthier.  The wine pour is the last open frontier where you can still game the system a little. No one uses a pour spout for wine. Seriously, if the bartender does that, leave.