Oxytocin, called the 'love hormone' in popular accounts, affects men and women differently in social contexts, say a group of psychologists. In men it improves the ability to identify competitive relationships whereas in women it facilitates the ability to identify kinship.

Oxytocin is released in our bodies in various social situations. Our bodies release it at highwe levels during positive social interactions such as falling in love, experiencing an orgasm or giving birth and breastfeeding and in previous papers, 
Prof. Simone Shamay-Tsoory from the Dept. of Psychology at the University of Haifa

Raising fish in tanks  doesn't help them all that much when they are released into the wild - but there may be an easy fix: put in hiding places and obstacles. It makes fish smarter and improves their chances of survival in nature, according to a new paper.

Why does that matter? Because conservation fish hatcheries raise cod, salmon, trout and other types of fish and release them in places where their species may be threatened, or where their populations are declining.  

Astronomers have found a new way of measuring the spin in supermassive black holes. By viewing optical, ultra-violet and soft x-rays generated by heat as the black hole fed, they were able to measure how far the disc was from the black hole. 

Researchers have devised a way to measure the internal properties of stars, a method that offers more accurate assessments of their orbiting planets. 

The astronomers examined HD 52265, a star  nearly 20 percent more massive than our Sun
 that is approximately 92 light years away. More than a decade ago, scientists identified an exopanet in the star's orbit. HD 52265 became an ideal model for both measuring stars' properties and how such properties can shed light on planetary systems.

Previously, scientists inferred stars' properties, such as radius, mass, and age, by considering observations of their brightness and color. Often these stars' properties were not known to sufficient accuracy to further characterize the nearby planets.

Time to reconsider the relationship between science and the supernatural. A number of colleagues in both science and philosophy argue that the supernatural is nothing special, that god-related hypotheses can be tested by ordinary scientific methods, and that — given the repeated failure of such tests — the only rational conclusion is that science has pretty much shown that there is no such thing as the supernatural.

A statistical model based on risk factors says it can predict the probability (absolute risk) of a woman developing breast, ovarian, and endometrial (womb) cancer using easily obtainable information on known risk factors for these cancers.

A computer model estimate says it might be easier than previously thought for a planet to overheat into the scorchingly uninhabitable "runaway greenhouse" stage. That may mean some planets thought to be habitable right now actually are not.

Fibromyalgia, widespread general muscle pain and fatigue, has no known causes or effective treatments but small-fiber polyneuropathy (SFPN) has a clear pathology and is known to be caused by specific medical conditions, some of which can be treated and sometimes cured.  

In a small group of patients with fibromyalgia, about half were found to have damage to nerve fibers in their skin and other evidence of small-fiber polyneuropathy. 

Researchers can argue about the accuracy of old thermometers and how to pick the datapoints of numerical models, but radio waves can help clear some things up.

The ionosphere, one of the regions of the upper atmosphere ionized by solar radiation, is used for the transmission of long-wave communications, like radio waves. And it turns out that radio waves reflecting back to Earth from the ionosphere offer valuable news on climate change.

Satellite observations made from 1982 to 2010 found that warm, arid regions are getting greener.