Researchers have captured images of the underlying biological activity within brain cells and their tree-like extensions, or dendrites, in mice that show how their brains sort, store and make sense out of information during learning. 

In a new study, neuroscientists tracked neuronal activity in dendritic nerve branches as the mice learned motor tasks such as how to run forward and backward on a small treadmill. They concluded that the generation of calcium ion spikes -- which appeared in screen images as tiny "lightning bolts" in these dendrites -- was tied to the strengthening or weakening of connections between neurons, hallmarks of learning new information. 

There was an article on the ABC site this morning which gave us this alarming headline “Pesticide banned worldwide still used to grow 70pc of Australian strawberries”.

Shocking!

Except, well, there were a few teeny tiny but important details missing. Like the fact that the rest of the world is still using the “banned” pesticide too.

Intermittent fasting (also called alternate day fasting) has become a popular diet.

In most versions of intermittent fasting, people fast or eat very little a few days each week and then eat normal amounts during the remaining days.

Fasting is something that human beings have practiced throughout history, often out of circumstance rather than choice. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors were probably expert fasters, indulging in feasts in times of plenty, and then facing long periods of scarcity in between. With this in mind, it makes sense that our bodies' cells could perform well under the harsh conditions of feast and famine.

By Ben Stein, Inside Science - Testing whether a drug is safe and effective usually takes many years and millions of dollars. Now, researchers have discovered a surprisingly simple method that could quickly and inexpensively weed out many toxic drugs early in the testing process. The test simply explores how much a drug alters a cell's outer covering, or membrane.

It's no surprise to most that Germanwings Flight 9525 co-pilot Andreas Lubitz, who crashed the plane into a mountain, killing all of the passengers and crew, had been treated for suicidal tendencies. 

If you want to be sure you, or your child, is optimizing the chances for safety while playing hockey, one helmet stands alone.

The Department of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanics at Virginia Tech bought 32 helmets and tested each helmet in four directions at three energy levels twice -- a total 48 tests per model. The entire evaluation process included more than 2,000 impact tests done both on an ice rink and inside a laboratory at the Institute of Critical Technology and Applied Science at Virginia Tech.

It's not always about burning calories after the fact, sometimes it is better for overall health to plan before that high fat meal.

The health benefits of the Mediterranean diet are well-known. As well as being healthier, a recent article concludes that the menu traditionally eaten in Spain leaves less of a carbon footprint than that of the US or the United Kingdom.

The consequences of climate change range from species extinction to sea-level increases and the spread of diseases. For this reason, researchers have been struggling for years to alleviate its effects, even limiting the pollution caused by food consumption.

It may sound like the makings of a joke, but answering the question of how chickens crossed the sea may soon provide more than just a punch line.

Michigan State University researcher Eben Gering has collaborated with a team in a study of the mysterious ancestry of the feral chicken population that has overrun the Hawaiian Island of Kauai. Their results, published in the current issue of Molecular Ecology, may aid efforts to curtail the damage of invasive species in the future, and help improve the biosecurity of domestic chicken breeds.

Health information exchanges are supposed to improve the speed, quality, safety and cost of patient care, but there is little evidence of that in existing health information exchange benefit studies, according to a research paper published this month in the prestigious journal Health Affairs.

Researchers synthesized and quantitatively assessed 27 health information exchange benefit studies, said Nir Menachemi, a professor and chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management in the Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis and one of the authors of the paper. He was at the University of Alabama at Birmingham while the review of the health information exchange studies study was conducted.