A study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences says that metformin, the world's most widely used anti-diabetic drug, slows aging and increases lifespan. 

In their experiments, the researchers tease out the mechanism behind metformin's age-slowing effects: the drug causes an increase in the number of toxic oxygen molecules released in the cell and this, surprisingly, increases cell robustness and longevity in the long term.

Mitochondria – the energy factories in cells – generate tiny electric currents to provide the body's cells with energy. Highly reactive oxygen molecules are produced as a by-product of this process.

A recent analysis of voting trends of physicians has found that political contributions have gone up a lot and more of them have become Democrats; no surprise given Democratic efforts to increase federal presence in medicine.

The percentage of physicians making campaign contributions in federal elections increased to 9.4 percent in 2012 from 2.6 percent in 1991, and during that time physician contributors shifted away from Republicans toward Democrats. That trend was greater among lower paying specialties, such as pediatrics, and among women. 

Obesity often is associated with increased health related complications and death but some studies have found an 'obesity paradox' - people who are obese but otherwise healthy. Concern has been that may cause some to question striving for a normal weight.

Christian Dehlendorff, M.S., Ph.D., of the Danish Cancer Society Research Center, Copenhagen, Denmark, and colleagues sought to determine whether the obesity paradox in stroke was real or an artificial finding because of selection bias in studies. To overcome selection bias, authors only studied deaths caused by the index stroke using a Danish register of stroke and a registry of deaths.

A team of researchers has developed sperm-inspired microrobots which can be controlled by oscillating weak magnetic fields. 

The 322 micron-long robots consist solely of a head coated in a thick cobalt-nickel layer and an uncoated tail. When the robot is subjected to an oscillating field of less than five millitesla – about the strength of a decorative refrigerator magnet – it experiences a magnetic torque on its head, which causes its flagellum to oscillate and propel it forward. The researchers are then able to steer the robot by directing the magnetic field lines towards a reference point.

To some, it might seem that you can patent anything these days. Last week a weird story appeared in my Facebook newsfeed: Amazon has somehow been able to patent photography against a white background. The story was originally reported on DIY Photography. It has been making the Internet rounds since. The Electronic Freedom Foundation points out that the story made it onto the Colbert Report. But things aren’t always as they appear.

Imagine this as a business model: You own a large potato farm. You have workers who grow and process the potatoes, you hire people to pay them, you have a sales force to sell them and then you pay trucks to ship them and have people to collect the money. You have fixed and variable costs and you charge enough money to pay those and make a profit. You have created jobs.

The government decides that it wants to encourage everyone to grow potatoes. So they pass a law saying that if people will grow their own potatoes, they will subsidize it using tax dollars generated by other companies and workers. Then they mandate that in order to make growing potatoes appealing to more people, you will have to buy potatoes from individuals at the same price you sell them.

In our solar system, there are two basic kinds of planets- smaller, rocky terrestrials like Earth and Mars and then large gas giants like Neptune and Jupiter.

Though a middle ground between those two is missing locally, NASA's Kepler mission has discovered that these types of planets are very common around other stars. The aliens worlds of other systems - exoplanets - include terrestrials and gas giants, like we have, but also mid-sized "gas dwarfs" - based on how their host stars tend to fall into three distinct groups defined by their compositions.

Long-term follow-up results from a phase 1b immunotherapy trial combining drugs for advanced melanoma patients has shown encouraging results — long-lasting, with high survival rates — according to a presentation at the 2014 annual conference of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) in Chicago. 

Expectant mothers, a paper by social science scholars suggests that having an ultrasound to find out your child's gender may be giving subtle sociology clues about your views on proper gender roles and social psychology.

Wine was once okay for pregnant women in moderation, then all alcohol was bad, then wine was good again because of the miracle product du jour,  resveratrol , but now it may be bad again.

A new research says that when taken during pregnancy, resveratrol supplements led to developmental abnormalities in the fetal pancreas. Resveratrol has been touted for its human health benefits for years and is readily available over the counter.