Women get PMS and men get IMS. While it may be common knowledge that PMS is the psychological and emotional symptoms related to a woman’s menstrual cycle it is not so clear what IMS, or Irritable Male Syndrome, is. The name for the result of a drop in testosterone levels in male mammals may interfere extensively with a man's daily life, causing everything from depression and anxiety to hyper-sensitivity and anger. Jed Diamond, author of “Male Menopause,” specializes in helping men and women overcome negative outcomes of the condition.

Upon opening a shelf in the kitchen of a Splenda, or sucralose, addict it is certain one will find a treasure trove of regular foods that have been touched by the most popular sugar substitute in the U.S. Vitamin C drops, cookies and canned fruit—all with Splenda are a few examples of the extensive list of over 3,000 Splenda products. On the surface the zero-calorie Splenda, marketed with the catchy phrase “made from sugar so it tastes like sugar,” may seem like the sweetener of all sweeteners. However, similar to the mantra that getting a little requires giving a little, the consumption of Splenda doesn’t come free.

Millions of years of evolution have maximized the efficiency of how sea creatures move through water while humans have been trying to perfect streamlined designs for barely a century - but we're catching up.

Biologists and engineers from across the U.S. have been studying the flippers, fins and tails of whales and dolphins and discovered some features of their structure that contradict long-held engineering theories.

Dr. Frank Fish of West Chester University will talk about the impact these discoveries may have on traditional industrial designs on Tuesday 8th July at the Society for Experimental Biology's Annual Meeting in Marseille [Session A2].

A genome sequence is a long sequence written in a four letter code—3 billion letters in the case of a human genome. How genomic code is deciphered is traditionally left to professional annotators who use information from a number of sources (for instance, knowledge about similar genes in other organisms) to work out where a gene starts, stops and what it does. Even the "gold standard" of professional annotation is an exceptionally slow process.

However, new crowdsourcing technology hopes to provide a faster solution. Don't cringe, scientists, but it's Wikipedia.

Andrew Su, John Huss III and colleagues have established a 'Gene Wiki', an online repository of information on human genes, within Wikipedia. They envision a network of articles, created by a computer program and enhanced by user comments, which will describe the relationship and functions of all human genes.

A new study challenges the long-held belief that diversity of marine species has been increasing continuously since the origin of animals.

An international team carried out this decade-long study and concludes that most of the diversification occurred early on – relatively speaking.

"The general understanding for many decades has been that since the rise of the modern major groups of animals about 545 million years ago (i.e., since the beginning of the Phanerozoic Era), the diversity of animal life in the seas has undergone a roughly four-fold exponential increase," says Dr. Thomas D. Olszewski, a geology and geophysics professor at Texas A&M University. A steep increase in the diversity was believed to have occurred only between 145 million and 60 million years ago.

Researchers here now have a picture of a key molecule that lets microbes produce carbon dioxide and methane, the two greenhouse gases associated with global warming. The findings relate to organisms called methanogens and cap a 12-year effort into how industrial processes might be improved, explained Michael Chan, professor of biochemistry, and Joseph Krzycki, professor of microbiology, both of Ohio State University.

Methanogenesis is the process by which the gas methane is made, and it takes place everywhere across the globe, from swamps to landfills, releasing the gas that ultimately seeps into the atmosphere.

"This enzyme is the key to the whole process of methanogenesis from acetic acid," Krzycki said. "Without it, this form of methanogenesis wouldn't happen. Since it is so environmentally important worldwide, the impact of understanding this would be enormous."

Paying rural landowners in Oregon's Willamette Basin to protect at-risk animals won't necessarily mean that their newly conserved trees and plants will absorb more carbon from the atmosphere and vice versa, a new study has found.

The study, to be published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, analyzed hypothetical payments that were given to landowners to voluntarily take their acreage out of production for conservation. Scenarios conserving different types of land were also developed.

Vaginal microbicides currently in clinical trials may be the only weapon that will protect women against infection from HIV but they may actually be of more benefit to men than women, according to a new UCLA AIDS Institute study.

Microbicides are compounds that can be applied inside the vagina to protect against HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. Pharmaceutical companies are currently conducting trials of second-generation microbicides that are based on antiretroviral, or ARV, drugs.

The study, which used novel mathematical models to simulate clinical trials and population-level transmission of HIV, appears July 7 in the online issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Violence between partners, friends and acquaintances appears prevalent both before and during college, according to results of a survey of students at three urban college campuses published in the July issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

The transition from living at home to attending college may increase adolescents' vulnerability to relationship violence, according to background information in the article. Factors associated with this risk include less parental monitoring and support, isolation in an unknown environment and a strong desire for peer acceptance that can change behaviors toward others.

Christine M.

Is baseball biased toward left-handed pitchers? Indeed it is, says David A. Peters, Ph.D., McDonnell Douglas Professor of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis (and uber baseball fan) and he says he has the data to prove it.

There's no question left-handed pitchers, even less than great ones, can last a long time in baseball. But 90 percent of the world is right-handed yet only 75 percent of baseball players are. Is that because left-handed pitchers do better against right-handed hitters so teams develop more left-handed hitters toi counter that or is it part of a vast, left-hand conspiracy?