Bumblebees can glean differences in pollen quality based on floral features like petal color and that informs their decision on where to land.

Bees do not sample pollen so it has been unclear how they determined quality. The new study in the Journal of Experimental Biology found that they are able to form associative relationships between appearance and pollen quality. Bumblebees can individually assess pollen samples and discriminate between them during collection, quickly forming preferences for a particular type of pollen.

Pollen foraging behavior involves learning and individual decision-making, which may allow bees to quickly learn which flowers provide the most nutritious pollen rewards for rearing their young, the authors write. 

Diverticulitis was once the refrain of a Saturday Night Live skit but it isn't funny to people who have it.  

A paper in Quality of Life Research has interviews with diverticulitis patients and it confirms that many suffer psychological and physical symptoms long after their acute illness has passed.

Schrödinger's cat is one of the famous examples of the weirdness of quantum mechanics  

The thought puzzle is that you put a cat inside a box and make its life dependent on a random event, when does the cat die? When the random event occurs, or when you open the box?

Millennials are redefining adulthood by living at home and getting supported by their parents longer than ever - and in the future it may turn into outright exploitation.

It used to be that family watched out for shysters out to bilk their parents but now the nearly 5 percent elderly American adults being financially exploited are often exploited by family members - poor and black people the most. 

Dr. Janey Peterson of Weill Cornell Medical College led one of the largest American studies ever done on elder abuse and the results appeared in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. 

Toddlers who did not frolic and smile and laugh were once called pensive or shy or quiet but now a Preschool Feelings Checklist
can label kids as depressed at 3 years of age. 

Using that as a factual basis, a paper in the American Journal of Psychiatry has found that depressed preschoolers were 2.5 times more likely to suffer from the condition in elementary and middle school than kids who were not diagnosed as depressed at very young ages.

Doctors and scientists maintain that children as young as 3 or 4 can not be clinically depressed. 

A trigeneration system fueled entirely by raw plant oils could have great potential for isolated homes and businesses operating outside grid systems.

Combined Heat and Power units have been used by large businesses for many years, producing electricity from a generator, and running heating off the engine cooling system and exhausts. But on small premises, where turning on an appliance such as a pump or a kettle can increase the electrical load several fold in a matter of seconds, attempts to match the competing demands of electricity and heat can seriously undermine the units' efficiency.

A comparison of Baltic Sea region amber with amber from Asia could be significant - rather than being found just in Mecklenburg, Poland or Belarus, European species have been found almost 10,000 kilometers away in Fushun, even though Europe and Asia were divided by the Strait of Turgay, a wide arm of the ocean, 50 million years ago.  

The pieces from the Baltic region are younger than the ones from Fushun and the assumption has been that this body of saltwater prevented species migrations between the continents.  

A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized clinical trials on the effects of tree nuts for metabolic syndrome found a "modest decrease" in blood fats known as triglycerides and blood sugars compared to those who ate a control diet. 

 Tree nuts are such things as almonds, Brazil nuts, cashews, chestnuts, coconuts, hazelnuts, pecans, macadamia nuts, walnuts, pine nuts and pistachios and appear to help reduce two of the five markers for metabolic syndrome, a group of factors that raise the risk for heart disease and other health problems such as diabetes and strokes, a new research paper says. 

Sorry Mr. Peanut, you are not on the list because you are a legume.

Folate is a naturally occurring form of vitamin B found in food, while folic acid is synthetically produced and used in fortified foods and supplements. Taking folic acid before and during early pregnancy is linked to a reduction in the risk of neural tube defects like spina bifida. The current recommended dose is 400 ìg (micrograms) a day though it is unclear how much daily folic acid is needed to prevent neural tube defects.

One of the most promising aspects of a Science 2.0 future is not just being able to analyze trillions of data points or getting the public to help with biology, but making more accurate models using much larger data sets. Big data.