Muslim clerics get a bad rap in an interconnected world. It was once possible to be anti-women, anti-medicine and anti-science without much notice - just control the media - but today that is a difficult task.

In some parts of the world, imams, Islamic school teachers and traditional rulers are making a positive difference and pushing back the vestiges of conspiracy theories about medicine. In defiance of past teaching, they are working with doctors, journalists and polio survivors to turn the tide against polio vaccine rejection in northern Nigeria. 

Spider silk is lightweight and stretchy yet has tensile strength greater than steel.

Its chemistry is just as fascinating. Silk proteins, called spidroins, must convert from a soluble form to solid fibers at ambient temperatures, with water as a solvent, and at high speed. How do spiders achieve this astounding feat? A new paper discusses how the silk formation process is regulated. 

Scientists report that they can crank up insect aggression simply by interfering with a basic metabolic pathway.

Their study of fruit flies and honey bees shows a direct, causal link between brain metabolism (how the brain generates the energy it needs to function) and aggression.

The team reports its findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Alcohol, including red wine which has acquired its own modern health food mythology, may be damaging to your health in a way you hadn't thought about before.

It isn't just the booze itself, a group of scholars contends it's the packaging. Phthalate compounds are widespread in our environment and present in many plastics. Obviously, any toxicity of phthalates varies depending on their chemical composition and some compounds are considered to be potential hormone disruptorrs, so they are regulated on an international level, including for those likely to come into contact with food and drink packaging.

Do women and men ride differently? If so, would a horse know in a blind human rider test?

For centuries, horses were a tool of wealthy elites during war and so riding was largely restricted to males. By contrast, today nearly 80 percent of riders are women. Modern-day equestrian sports is one of very few fields where men and women compete directly against one another at all levels, from beginners in gymkhanas to national champions in the Olympic Games.  Even chess insists women are different than men while equestrians do not.

It is said that consuming oils with high polyunsaturated fatty acid content, in particular those containing omega-3s, is beneficial for the health, but is that true, or is it just epidemiologtists finding two curves that go the same direction and declaring causation?

Scientifically, any mechanisms underlying this phenomenon are poorly known. Researchers recently investigated the effect of lipids bearing polyunsaturated chains when they are integrated into cell membranes. Their work shows that the presence of these lipids makes the membranes more malleable and therefore more sensitive to deformation and fission by proteins.

Diversity in the workplace has been a contentious issue for many employers and their critics. In May 2014, Google disclosed that 70% of its employees are male and the company is 61% White, 30% Asian, 3% Hispanic and 2% Black. Sacramento, California was named Time magazine's most diverse city but a basketball player, Chris Webber, claimed it was not diverse enough - he moved there from Detroit, a city that is 83% black.

America is only 5% Asian so clearly they are a minority, and America's most diverse city is not diverse to someone who moved from a city where they were the overwhelming majority. 

Much of our daily lives are taken up by habits that we've formed over our lifetime. An important characteristic of a habit is that it's automatic-- we don't always recognize habits in our own behavior. Studies show that about 40 percent of people's daily activities are performed each day in almost the same situations. Habits emerge through associative learning. "We find patterns of behavior that allow us to reach goals. We repeat what works, and when actions are repeated in a stable context, we form associations between cues and response," Wendy Wood explains in her session at the American Psychological Association's 122nd Annual Convention.

What are habits?

A stroke therapy using stem cells extracted from patients' bone marrow has shown promising results in the first trial of its kind in humans.

Five patients received the treatment in a pilot study conducted by doctors at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and scientists at Imperial College London.

The therapy was found to be safe, and all the patients showed improvements in clinical measures of disability.

The findings are published in the journal Stem Cells Translational Medicine. It is the first UK human trial of a stem cell treatment for acute stroke to be published.

Researchers working on biomimicry have produced the first structural color change in an animal by influencing evolution: They've changed the color of the butterfly Bicyclus anynana from brown to violet - and needed only six generations of selection to do it.

Little is known about how structural colors in nature evolved, although researchers have studied such mechanisms extensively in recent years. Most attempts at biomimicry involve finding a desirable outcome in nature and simply trying to copy it in the laboratory.

The discovery published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences may have implications for physicists and engineers trying to use evolutionary principles in the design of new materials and devices.