Oxytocin, the warm, fuzzy miracle hormone that promotes feelings of love, social bonding and well-being, isn't quite as simple as those miracle-cure-of-the-week newspaper stories want you to believe.

It turns out that correlation is not causation, which surprises no one in science, and that oxytocin is also linked to emotional pain. Maybe someone will call this other form Dark Oxytocin, because stressful social situations continue to haunt you and and even trigger fear and anxiety in the future, you can blame hormones. And putting Dark in front of mysterious things is popular.

When some galaxies stop forming new stars, they become "quenched".

Quenched galaxies in the distant past appear to be much smaller than the quenched galaxies in the Universe today, which is something of a science mystery; how can these galaxies grow if they are no longer forming stars?
Hubble COSMOS survey results may have delivered a surprisingly simple answer to this long-standing cosmic riddle.

The Standard Model has some gaps and is unable to explain phenomena like dark matter or gravitational interaction between particles. Some physicists are seeking what they call "New Physics", something more fundamental, but there has been no direct proof of its existence, only indirect observation of dark matter, as deduced, among other things, from the movement of the galaxies.

A small clinical study showed promise for a new method of treating chronic wounds; an ultrasound applicator that can be worn like a band-aid.

The applicator delivers low-frequency, low-intensity ultrasound directly to wounds, and was found to significantly accelerate healing in five patients with venous ulcers, which are caused when valves in the veins malfunction, causing blood to pool in the leg instead of returning to the heart. This pooling, called venous stasis, can cause proteins and cells in the vein to leak into the surrounding tissue leading to inflammation and formation of an ulcer. 

The CDF and DZERO experiments recently produced a combination of their precision measurements of the W boson mass, and proceeded to include the LEP II results to obtain a "world average" of that very important parameter of the Standard Model.

The measurement is described in detail in a paper which explains the combination procedure (not trivial, since there are a number of systematic uncertainties that are partly correlated between the experiments). The Tevatron inputs are as follows:

CDF Run I (107/pb, 1.8 TeV): M_W = 80432+-79 MeV
CDF Run II (2.2/fb, 1.96 TeV): M_W = 80387+-19 MeV
DZERO Run I (95/pb, 1.8 TeV): M_W = 80478+-83 MeV

Two papers published this week have proposed explanations regarding the evolution of social monogamy among mammals and especially primates.  Of three competing hypothesis, one proposes that a driving force in establishing social monogamy was the protection of offspring by preventing male infanticide, while the other proposes that social monogamy is the result of female intolerance towards each other and a low population density that simply prevents males from adequately "guarding" females from other males (1).

How would editors at National Review regard the credibility of a controlled market publication that had its economic policy articles written by astrologers using the stars as their evidence?

They might not like it but so what? Can they prove astrologers can't make economic policy? No, it's just flawed logic, sort of like me challenging someone to prove I am not an alien from space. That is the problem with National Review paying someone from the Discovery Institute to spout anti-science nonsense about 35-year-old science under the guise of 'ethics'. Because misunderstanding and logical head-faking is the strategy the Discovery Institute uses to promote doubt about biology in general and evolution in specific.

True efficient wireless power transfer, not just giant machines in a lab or tiny mats under a cell phone, are what we all dream about. Getting rid of cords that force airport travelers to huddle around power outlets like cavemen around an Arctic fire has been the goal for a hundred years.

There are real-world obstacles to overcome, such as what happens to a resonant wireless power transfer system in the presence of complex electromagnetic environments, like metal plates.

If you live in an area where solar power is close to viable, you probably also do not get a lot of rain. Over time, dust and dirt build up on solar panels, leading to a loss of efficiency.

But not enough to warrant washing them, according to an analysis by the University of California, San Diego. 

A longstanding puzzle has been solved.

How do northern flying squirrels (Glaucomys sabrinus) locate truffles (Gautieria monticola) – bearing in mind that the truffles are a subterranean and ephemeral but primary food source?

Sanjay Pyare (Assistant Professor of GIS and Landscape Ecology, at the University of Alaska Southeast, ) and colleague William S Longland (at the Agricultural Research Service, Reno, NV) investigated this question back in 2001, and published the results of their observations in the Canadian Journal of Zoology, 2001, 79:1007-1015.