People with persistent ringing in the ears – a condition known as tinnitus – process emotions differently than those with normal hearing, according to a new paper.

Tinnitus afflicts 50 million people in the United States, according to the American Tinnitus Association, and causes those with the condition to hear noises that aren't really there. These phantom sounds are not speech, but rather whooshing noises, train whistles, cricket noises or whines. Their severity often varies day to day.

For people from eastern states like New York or Boston, California is a dream. People feel like they could just take over and declare themselves King and no one would try to stop them because it would hurt their feelings. It's like Canada, except the women are all in Daisy Duke shorts and bikini tops.

But that passive demeanor isn't good when nature wants to kill you. And she does. Watersnakes, commonly seen in the lakes, rivers and streams of the eastern United States, are invading California waterways and may wipe out native species, according to a new study. 

Field surveys are so 20th century. Satellites are the wave of the future when studying remote penguin populations. Like with space travel, we may someday wonder why we wouldn't send robots or satellites to do a man's work.

Neanderthals from Spain may have consumed more vegetables than previously thought, according to a dietary reconstruction.

Space looks empty the same way that nature sounds quiet. Unlike nature, space actually is a soundless vacuum, but it's not a void. Invisible to human eyes, space flows with electric activity. NASA is developing plans to send humans to an asteroid, and wants to know more about the electrical environment explorers will encounter there.

A fungus living in the soils of Nova Scotia may be a secret weapon in the battle against drug-resistant germs that kill tens of thousands of people every year, including one considered a serious global threat.

A team of researchers has discovered a fungus-derived molecule known as AMA is able to disarm one of the most dangerous antibiotic-resistance genes: NDM-1 or New Delhi Metallo-beta-Lactamase-1, identified by the World Health Organization as a global public health threat.  

Discovering the properties of the fungus-derived molecule is critical because it can provide a means to target and rapidly block the drug-resistant pathogens that render carbapenem antibiotics—a class of drugs similar to penicillin—ineffective.

Cold Spring Harbor, NY – There are new clues about malfunctions in brain cells that contribute to intellectual disability and possibly other developmental brain disorders.

Professor Linda Van Aelst of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) has been scrutinizing how the normal version of a protein called OPHN1 helps enable excitatory nerve transmission in the brain, particularly at nerve-cell docking ports containing AMPA receptors (AMPARs). The study provides new mechanistic insight into how OPHN1 defects can lead to impairments in the maturation and adjustment of synaptic strength of AMPAR-expressing neurons, which are ubiquitous in the brain and respond to the excitatory neurotransmitter glutamate.

Wrinkles, creases and folds are everywhere in nature, from our skin to the buckled crust of the Earth. They're useful structures for engineers. Wrinkles in thin films, for example, can help make durable circuit boards for flexible electronics.

A new mathematical model developed by researchers from Brown University could help engineers control the formation of wrinkle, crease, and fold structures in a wide variety of materials. It may also help scientists understand how these structures form in nature. 

How common are taste metaphors? So common we don't even know they are metaphors.

When a kind smile is described as "sweet," or a resentful comment is considered "bitter," we most likely don't even think of those words as metaphors. But while it may seem to our ears that "sweet" by any other name means the same thing, new research shows that taste-related words actually engage the emotional centers of the brain more than literal words with the same meaning.

To read media accounts and claims by lawyers, everyone in the NFL except kickers is suffering some sort of brain damage. It was only a matter of time before those same claims were being made about pee-wee league football also/

While there are obviously cases in which that has happened, in-depth neurological examinations of 45 retired NFL players, ranging in age from 30-to 60-years old, using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), susceptibility weighted imaging (SWI), diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) along with comprehensive neuropsychological and neurological examinations, interviews, blood tests and APOE (apolipoprotein E) genotyping, found that most players haven't been affected.