It may begin as a feeling of unease that overtakes you as you cautiously make your way inside a long-abandoned house.  The air is thick; musty and stale.  Yet somehow it is laced with the underlying scent  of a burning fire… even though the cold crumbling fireplace hosted its last fire long ago.
 
As your eyes adjust, you begin to notice the stillness. There is absolutely no noise.  In fact, the silence is so oppressive, it presses in on your eardrums like the weight of an ocean… seeking to snuff out the sound of anything that should trespass upon it.  You get the distinct feeling it would like to quiet even the uneven sound of your shallow breaths… and then move on to silence the thump of your increasingly racing heartbeat.

The 2008 presidential campaign, as reflected in candidates' television spots, has been one of the most negative campaigns in history. A University of Missouri professor analyzed this year's candidates' television spots, including last night's 30-minute ad by Sen. Barack Obama and found that only one other campaign matched this level of negativity.

William Benoit, professor of communication in the College of Arts and Science, found that in television spots from 1952-2004, candidates averaged 40 percent attacks in their ad statements. In this year's race, the statements in Obama's ads were 68 percent negative compared to 62 percent for Sen. John McCain.

According to new research from the Monell Center, the degree of change in blood triglyceride levels following a fatty meal may indicate susceptibility to diet-induced obesity. The findings open doors to new methods of identifying people, including children, who are at risk for becoming obese. 

Triglycerides are a form of fat that is transported in the blood and stored in the body's fat tissues. They are found in foods and also are manufactured by the body. 

The largest such study ever published finds that while about 40 percent of women surveyed report having sexual problems only 12 percent indicate that those issues are a source of significant personal distress. The report led by a Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) physician appears in the November issue of Obstetrics&Gynecology. 

You have a burning chest pain and a doctor looks at a squiggly-lined graph to determine the cause. That graph, an electrocardiogram (ECG or EKG), can help the doctor decide whether you're having a heart attack or an acid attack from last night's spaghetti. Correct interpretation may prompt life-saving, emergency measures; incorrect interpretation may delay care with life-threatening consequences. Currently, there is no uniform way to teach doctors in training how to interpret an ECG or assess their competence in the interpretation.

Just last month, Hubble Space Telescope's main instruments were idled by a computer failure, but not to worry, thanks to NASA engineers, who successfully transferred the work of the failed science data downlink computer to a backup system, Hubble is up and running just a couple of days after the orbiting observatory was brought back online.

The 5,300 year old human mummy dubbed Öetzi (or ‘the Tyrolean Iceman’)  is highly unlikely to have modern day relatives, according to new research published today by a team of scientists from Italy and the UK.

They have sequenced Öetzi’s entire mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) genome, which is passed down through the maternal line, and found that he belonged to a genetic lineage that is either extremely rare or has died out.

The research has generated the oldest complete Homo sapiens mtDNA genome to date, and overturns previous research conducted in 1994 on a small section of Öetzi’s mtDNA, which suggested that relatives of Öetzi may still exist in Europe.

Can't get enough of The Beatles?   Two days ago we disclosed that a mathematician using Fourier transform had unlocked the secret of the 'mystery' chord in "A Hard Day's Night" and now The Beatles are back again - in a video game.

Apple Corps, along with EMI Music, Harrisongs Ltd, and Sony/ATV Music Publishing, have agreed to present The Beatles music in an interactive video game format, to be published by MTV Games and developed by Harmonix.

Last year, the New York Times reported that UPS managed to save 3 million gallons of gas in 2006 by altering the routes of delivery trucks to avoid left turns. According to the article, the company uses software called “package flow” to map out daily routes for drivers. Clearly, the method or “algorithm” this software employs to design efficient routes has sizeable economic (and greenhouse gas) consequences. And, not only is it far from perfect, but the general routing problem is so difficult that, well, if in the course of reading this article you happen upon an efficient solution, you will become immediately famous, at least among computer scientists.

Normal-weight women who carry out lots of vigorous exercise are approximately 30% less likely to develop breast cancer than those who don't exercise vigorously, according to a study of more than thirty thousand postmenopausal American women reported in Breast Cancer Research.  So a sedentary lifestyle can be a risk factor for the disease – even in women who are not overweight.