Referrals for genetic testing more than doubled across the UK after actress Angelina Jolie announced in May that she proactively underwent a double mastectomy due to testing positive for a BRCA1 gene mutation.

The rise in referrals continued through to October, long after the announcement was made, according to findings in Breast Cancer Research.

The wage gap between government employees and the private sector is already large and growing. Now there will be a gap in benefits due to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (AKA Obamacare) also.

Employees working for Fortune 500 companies can expect to pay higher employee contributions for their health insurance, according to a survey of chief human resource officer.

Patrick Wright, a professor in strategic human resource management at the University of South Carolina, directs the annual the HR@Moore Survey of Chief HR Officers. The survey is distributed to more than 560 CHROs of Fortune 500 companies and members of HR Policy Association, a professional organization. 

A new study uses tree rings to document arroyo evolution along the lower Rio Puerco and Chaco Wash in northern New Mexico.

Five years ago, it was good luck finding a hotel anywhere near the rural areas where natural gas extraction - fracking - was taking place.

The boom in natural gas meant a boom in employment and a boom in hotel rooms to keep workers. The wealth boosted Pennsylvania and other energy-dense states while most of the country remains mired in economic malaise. But over time people buy homes rather than rent hotel rooms and now there may be too many, says hospitality management scholars at Penn State.

"Demand is still high in many of the counties in the Marcellus Shale region, but the occupancy rate is starting to come down," says associate professor Daniel Mount. "The case could be made that this is a sign that hotels were overbuilt."

Miranda is a small, icy moon of Uranus and one of the most visually striking and enigmatic bodies in the solar system.

Despite its relatively small size, Miranda appears to have experienced an episode of intense resurfacing that resulted in the formation of at least three remarkable and unique surface features -- polygonal-shaped regions called coronae. 

These coronae are visible in Miranda's southern hemisphere, and each one is at least 200 km across. Arden corona, the largest, has ridges and troughs with up to 2 km of relief. Elsinore corona has an outer belt that is approx. 80 km wide, relatively smooth, and elevated above the surrounding terrain by approx. 100 m. Inverness corona has a trapezoidal shape with a large, bright chevron at its center.

Researchers at Harvard School of Medicine and the University at Buffalo have discovered a sleep-promoting circuit located deep in the primitive brainstem, only the second "sleep node" identified in the mammalian brain whose activity appears to be both necessary and sufficient to produce deep sleep. 

Writing in Nature Neuroscience, the study demonstrates that fully half of all of the brain's sleep-promoting activity originates from the parafacial zone (PZ) in the brainstem. The brainstem is a primordial part of the brain that regulates basic functions necessary for survival, such as breathing, blood pressure, heart rate and body temperature.

By Steve Ellen, Monash University

Everyday life is full of mini-ethical moments. Do you own up to being under charged? Do you push in when the traffic is heavy and you’re running late? Do you hassle your kid’s teacher to get little Jimmie or Jane an advantage?

Most of us do our best, but various emotions, motives, and practicalities act to push us to our limits. Sometimes our limits are breached – mine were on a recent tour in Greece.

Even a single dose of  the commonly prescribed antidepressant SSRI (serotonin reuptake inhibitor) is enough to produce dramatic changes in the functional architecture of the human brain. Brain scans taken of people before and after an acute dose of SSRI reveal changes in connectivity within three hours, according to results in Current Biology.