Is fairness simply a ruse we adopt only when we see an advantage in it for ourselves? Many psychologists have moved away from this utilitarian view, dismissing it as too simplistic, but recent advances in both cognitive science and neuroscience now allow psychologists to approach this question in some different ways, and they are getting some intriguing results.

UCLA psychologist Golnaz Tabibnia, and colleagues Ajay Satpute and Matthew Lieberman, used a psychological test called the “ultimatum game" to explore fairness and self-interest in the laboratory. In this particular version of the test, Person A has a pot of money, say $23, which they can divide in any way they want with Person B. All Person B can do is look at the offer and accept or reject it; there is no negotiation. If Person B rejects the offer, neither of them gets any money.

Fishing activities can provoke volatile fluctuations in the populations they target, namely by altering the “age pyramid.” Lopping off the few large, older fish that make up the top of the pyramid leaves a broad base of faster-growing small younglings and the research team found that this rapidly growing and transitory base is dynamically unstable — a finding having profound implications for the ecosystem and the fishing industries built upon it.

Imagine a container of water with a 500-pound fish. With food, it grows a little bigger. Without food it gets a bit smaller. Imagine the same container with 500 one-pound fish. They eat, reproduce and the resulting thousands of fish boom, quickly outstripping the resources and the population crashes.

LONDON, April 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Results of a study investigating an oral therapy for relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis (MS) have shown that continuous use of the drug, known as FTY720 or fingolimod, led to two-thirds of participants remaining free of relapses over three years.

During the annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology in Chicago on Wednesday, Italian researchers reported the results of the study of 173 people.

The results also showed that the inflammatory activity associated with MS, as assessed by MRI scans, remained low with 89 per cent of people with MS free of active brain lesions three years after starting the treatment.

LONDON, April 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Heren Energy is pleased to announce the inclusion of Dutch end-user energy market coverage within the End-User Energy Price Report, supplementing its successful analysis of end-user gas and power prices in the UK.

The End-User Energy Price Report sees Heren Energy draw on its expertise in wholesale gas, power and carbon markets to deliver pioneering comment, analysis and delivered prices for the end-user market. This expanding coverage exhibits Heren Energy's commitment to uncovering what end users should actually be paying for their energy costs across the European Union.

True agoraphobia is an invalidating disease but a paper by Giovanni A. Fava and associates of the University of Bologna, published in Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, questions the excessive emphasis on panic which has been attributed in the past decade and the role of pharmaceutical industry in this attribution.

In studying the phenomenology of panic attacks, Argyle and Roth noticed that truly spontaneous attacks, not preceded by anxiety-provoking cognitions, were uncommon.

Patients meeting positive criteria for panic disorder suffered from the whole range of anxiety disorders, and a unique relationship with agoraphobia was not seen. Indeed, other diagnoses (particularly social phobia and generalized anxiety disorder) frequently predated the onset of panic. This was true also for agoraphobia.

People who score high on intelligence tests are also good at keeping time, new Swedish research shows. The team that carried out the study also suspect that accuracy in timing is important to the brain processes responsible for problem solving and reasoning.

Researchers at the medical university Karolinska Institutet and Umeå University have now demonstrated a correlation between general intelligence and the ability to tap out a simple regular rhythm. They stress that the task subjects performed had nothing to do with any musical rhythmic sense but simply measured the capacity for rhythmic accuracy. Those who scored highest on intelligence tests also had least variation in the regular rhythm they tapped out in the experiment.

HONG KONG, SAO PAULO, Brazil, SHANGHAI, China and PHILADELPHIA, April 16 /PRNewswire/ --

- Strategic Alliances with Roche and Pfizer Provide Portfolio of Over 20 Products -

moksha8, Inc. announced today strategic partnerships with Roche and Pfizer, the launch of over twenty products and establishment of its Latin America headquarters in Sao Paulo, Brazil. moksha8 is committed to providing the highest quality medicine to the fastest growing markets of the world, with an initial focus on Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe.

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, North Carolina, April 16 /PRNewswire/ --

Quintiles Transnational Corp. today announced the appointment of Oren Cohen, M.D. as Senior Vice President, Clinical Research Strategies.

Most recently, Cohen held the position of Chief Medical and Scientific Officer. In his new role, Cohen will be responsible for evaluating and implementing new clinical research strategies, part of the company's "shape the future" objective. He also will continue to serve as Managing Director of Quintiles Public Health and Government Services.

There is continual debate taking place over whether organisms are the result of intelligent design or evolution. The proponents of intelligent design believe that chance and selection are too casual and slow to allow complex new properties to arise. In particular, they argue that the intermediate steps in shuffling the genes to make something new are likely to scramble the existing system and be bad for the organism, e.g., "half an eye is bad for you."

A study directed by Mark Isalan, leader of the group Gene Network Engineering and Luis Serrano, coordinator of the research programme Systems Biology and leader of the group Design of Biological Systems from the Centre for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona, Spain, says that although it may seem incredible that organisms could be able to face extreme mutation processes and gene reorganization, that is just what happens.

DUBLIN, Ireland, April 16 /PRNewswire/ --

- DomainsBot extensive "name spinner" Internet address search and suggestion tool now includes .mobi domains

dotMobi, the consortium behind .mobi -- the only Internet address created specifically for mobile phones -- today announced that DomainsBot, the leading domain name suggestion and search engine company, will now include .mobi in their domain name search and suggestion tool, used by the majority of the world's best-known Internet domain name retailers, including GoDaddy, Tucows and Register.com.