Psychologists say they have compelling evidence that older adults can eliminate forgetfulness and perform as well as younger adults on memory tests. 

They used a distraction learning strategy to help older adults overcome age-related forgetting and say it boosted their performance to that of younger adults. Distraction learning sounds like an oxymoron but some claims are that older brains are adept at processing irrelevant and relevant information in the environment, without conscious effort, to aid memory performance.  It's intriguing enough it will likely be on Dr. Oz next month.

The Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) is more accurately known as herpesvirus 4 (HHV-4), one of 8 viruses in the herpes family and one of the most common viruses in humans, affecting more than 90 percent of the population worldwide and over 95% of adults in America - so common it is almost hard to attribute it to anything. 

The Epstein-Barr viruswas first discovered in the early 1960s. Infections in early childhood usually have no symptoms, but it remains for life and also people infected during adolescence or young adulthood may develop mononucleosis. It has been associated with Hodgkin's lymphoma, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and nasopharyngeal carcinoma. 

An international group of scientists has discovered a new class of molecular compounds capable of killing the influenza virus. 

You learned this from your parents; too much even of a good thing can be a killer and that same idea has led to manipulating an enzyme that is key to how influenza replicates and spreads. The  newly discovered compounds interrupt the enzyme neuraminidase's facilitation of influenza's spread.

Last month, physicists predicted the formation of accretion disks and relativistic jets that warp and bend more than previously thought, shaped both by the extreme gravity of black holes and by powerful magnetic forces generated by their spin. 

Black holes, absences at the center of both galaxies and science fiction, shape the growth and death of stars around them through both their powerful gravitational pull and explosive ejections of energy - a pull so strong close to a black hole that even light cannot escape from within, hence the difficulty in observing them directly. 

Sociologists have found that student loans provide more help to women than they do for men in encouraging graduation from college but, on average, taking out loans makes graduation more likely for all students.

Yet the debt eventually  has diminishing returns and becomes less effective at boosting chances of graduation -  about $2,000 lower for men than for women. Part of the reason may be because the job prospects for male college dropouts are better for men than women.

Legislation to restrict guns is a lot like legislation to restrict abortion - it's a tough sell at the federal level because of that pesky Constitution so it requires a friendly court and and a lot of lawyers. States, of course, can do it more easily. Some states have ways to restrict abortions and some states have ways to restrict guns.

Gun restriction proponents like Vice-President Joe Biden would probably like to restrict abortions too. America is the only civilized country that still allows late-term abortions on demand, but abortion doctors don't rush into schools and go on an abortion spree so score one for abortion fans.

Unlike comets, asteroids don't have a trail - with some exceptions.

Spanish researchers observed using the Gran Telescopio Canarias and discovered that something happened around July 1st, 2011 that caused a trail to appear on P/2012 F5 (Gibbs) - perhaps an internal rupture or a collision with another asteroid.

In many animals, the brain is located in a specific structure like the head, along with sensory organs and often together with the mouth.

However, there are distantly related animals which have a nervous system but no brain, like sea anemones and corals.

In a new paper, the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis was used to find out if one of the ends of the sea anemone corresponds to the head of higher animals. To do this the researchers studied the function of genes that control head development in higher animals during the embryonic development of the starlet sea anemone. 

Schizophrenia may affect up to 1 percent of the population, it is diagnosed primarily in the teenage or early adult years, and is associated with problems in mental ability and memory.

People who have a greater familial genetic link to schizophrenia are more likely to see a fall in IQ as they age, even if they do not develop the condition, according to psychologists in a new paper. 

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have not found genetic causes for schizophrenia but familial instances are considered a risk factor. The psychologists used genetic analysis matched with IQ test results to reach their conclusion on how thinking skills change with age. 

Today I spent the better part of the afternoon in the company of 150 high-school students at the Liceo Fermi in Padova, giving a seminar on particle physics in the context of a project called "Masterclasses" which has been active since 2005 and is a big success.

The project aims at students in the last years of their high school and attempts to involve them in the experiments undergoing at the CERN laboratories. Sets of lectures on particle physics and cosmology at the schools are followed by a "hands-on" session at the Physics Department, where students are taught and then tested in recognizing heavy particle decays from event displays.