Neurons are vital to the functional organization of the central nervous system. Multiple cell types are present within any brain structure, but the rules governing their positioning, and the molecular mechanisms mediating those rules, are unknown.

A new study finds that a particular neuron, the cholinergic amacrine cell, creates a "personal space" in much the same way that people distance themselves from one another in an elevator. The study also says that this feature is heritable and identifies a genetic contributor to it, pituitary tumor-transforming gene 1 (Pttg1).

Rifampicin and related drugs are important antibiotics in the "drug cocktail" that cures tuberculosis in about 6 months. But two forms of tuberculosis, referred to as "multi-drug-resistant," or MDR, and "extensively drug-resistant," or XDR, have become resistant to rifampicin.

In 1993, resurging levels of tuberculosis due to antibiotic resistance led the World Health Organization to declare it a global health emergency. Today more than 1 million people around the world are dying each year from tuberculosis.

Obviously, as the creators of the four pillars of the Science 2.0 concept, we're interested in new ways to use data to make meaningful decisions, but we recognize that key breakthroughs are more likely to happen in the private sector, where money can be made filling a demand.

A paper by Aetna and GNS Healthcare Inc. in the American Journal of Managed Care demonstrates how analysis of patient records using analytics can predict future risk of metabolic syndrome.

As carbon dioxide (CO2) in America has declined, environmentalists and the federal government have begun to focus on the energy that got us CO2 emissions back at early 1990s levels - natural gas.

What was once the preferred solution of environmentally conscious people became worse than coal and methane, they began to claim, would make CO2 irrelevant if natural gas were not banned. That was a claim so crazy even the National Resources Defense Council disavowed it, though it got a prominent place, bolstered by lots of anonymous sources, in the New York Times.

If your child spends their evening beating up hookers in Grand Theft Auto, there is a silver lining - they are less likely to actually beat up hookers in real life. At least surveys by humanities scholars say so.

This is good knowledge. There has long been a fear that advertising of McDonald's Happy Meals and cigarettes and violence in media might actually lead to people buying more junk food or smoking or being violent, but the new study led by Matthew Grizzard, PhD, assistant professor in the University at Buffalo Department of Communication, and co-authored by researchers at Michigan State University and the University of Texas, Austin, finds just the opposite: people who engage in bad behavior are less likely to do it because they have greater sensitivity.

A new study has found that palladium-gold nanoparticles are excellent catalysts for cleaning polluted water - and can even convert biodiesel waste into valuable chemicals.

In dozens of studies, Rice University chemical engineer Michael Wong and colleagues have focused on using the tiny metallic specks to break down carcinogenic and toxic compounds and have now examined whether palladium-gold nanocatalysts could convert glycerol, a waste byproduct of biodiesel production, into high-value chemicals.

Signals from the immune system that help repel common parasites  like tapeworms, roundworms and other helminths can inadvertently cause a dormant viral infection to become active again, which may explain how complex interactions between infectious agents and the immune system have the potential to affect illness.

The scientists identified specific signals in mice that mobilize the immune system to fight parasites that infect nearly a quarter of all humans. The same signals cause an inactive herpes virus infection in the mice to begin replicating again.

The researchers speculated that the virus might be taking advantage of the host response to the worm infection, multiplying and spreading when the immune system's attention is fixed on fighting the worms.

You wouldn't think that mechanical force, like kicking a ball in the World Cup or embossing letters on a credit card, could process nanoparticles more subtly than the most advanced chemistry but a current paper in Nature Communications describes a now patented method to use simple pressure — a kind of high-tech embossing — to produce finer and cleaner results in forming silver nanostructures than do chemical methods.

All without harmful byproducts to dispose of.

How bad is western music? Chimps in a study published by the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition preferred silence - yet they liked music from Africa.

And music from India. What is the reason for that?

Music in the east is structured differently, notation is everything from Swara Kalana to Chôngganbo, but African music is not all that different. Why would chimps like it more? It may be tempo. The current findings say this may be the first to show that they display a preference for particular rhythmic patterns. If the authors aren't sure, none of the rest of the world can be.

You can't coddle kids or their brains too much. Without a little bit of frustration and stress, they would never learn how to talk or read or do science. Without some physical stress, we would all be crawling from place to place.

Stress helps us learn, adapt and cope. But too much stress, such as from neglect or abuse, can be toxic. A team of University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers writing in Biological Psychiatry recently showed these kinds of stressors, experienced in early life, might be changing the parts of developing children's brains responsible for learning, memory and the processing of stress and emotion.