Parasitic lamprey are a challenge to study but an important one - they are an invasive pest in the Great Lakes but difficult to study under controlled conditions because they live up to 10 years and only spawn for a few short weeks in the summer before they die. 

Lamprey are slimy, eel-like parasitic fish with tooth-riddled, jawless, sucking mouths, and rather disgusting to look at, but thanks to their important position on the vertebrate family tree, they can offer important insights about the evolutionary history of brain development, according to a new paper in Nature.

Last decade, science faced an ecological puzzle: under hotter, drier conditions of global warming, forests should have been penalized but instead the rainforests thrived. It isn't the first time - the climate change that caused the death of the dinosaurs gave them a big boost also.

Wine, with its thousands of chemical combinations, can be hard to judge. As numerous studies have shown, getting experts to distinguish between a $4 bottle of wine and a $40 one is in the luck range

Can a nanosensor do better? Researchers at Aarhus University believe they are on that path, at least when it comes to dryness.

One way to know there will be no science at a nutrition conference is to find a yogic flying instructor on the panel roster. Yoga has a variety of mental and physical health benefits, just like all exercise and sports do, but it is not going to cure bipolar disorder or any other disease.

Even taking a few dozen surveys of people with bipolar disorder who do hatha yoga, a questionable methodology, does not find clinical benefits outside the placebo range, according to a paper in the Journal of Psychiatric Practice. 

Credit: Image of map courtesy of the USGS and composite image by Patricia Waldron

By: Patricia Waldron, Inside Science

(Inside Science) -- People living in Afghanistan have mined precious gems from their land, such as lapis lazuli, since the times of the Egyptian pharaohs. But modern analyses of the country's mineral deposits show that the Afghan people have barely scratched the surface of their mineable wealth.

Being at CERN for a couple of weeks, I could not refrain from following yesterday's talks in the Main Auditorium, which celebrated the 90th birthday of Herwig Schopper, who directed CERN in the crucial years of the LEP construction.

A talk I found most enjoyable was John Ellis'. He gave an overview of the historical context preceding the decision to build LEP, and then a summary of the incredible bounty of knowledge that the machine produced in the 1990s.

The current Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa has claimed more than 2000 lives and has spurred calls for a deeper understanding of the molecular biology of the virus that could be critical in the development of vaccines or antiviral drugs to treat or prevent Ebola hemorrhagic fever.

A team at the University of Virginia, under the leadership of Dr. Dan Engel, a virologist, and Dr. Zygmunt Derewenda, a structural biologist, has obtained the crystal structure of a key protein involved in Ebola virus replication, the C-terminal domain of the Zaire Ebola virus nucleoprotein (NP).

Magnetic stimulation of a brain area, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), involved in "executive function" affects cravings for and consumption of calorie-dense snack foods, reports a paper in Psychosomatic Medicine: Journal of Biobehavioral Medicine.

A new paper indicates that people with psychopathic traits have a preference for non-romantic sexual fantasies with anonymous and uncommitted partners.