As a society, we Westerners exalt individualism and self-reliance, and yet our biology moves us in other directions. Humans evolved as social animals, and we posses a number of behaviors that motivate us towards group conformity. The feeling of wanting friends, of desiring a peer group, and of needing to feel like we are valuable members of that group is something we all can directly relate to, and we usually experience those feelings as a positive thing. Yet there is a bit of a dark side to our social nature that we might not notice, particularly because so much of its action goes on underneath the level of conscious awareness.

A randomized controlled trial showed that fear of flying can be cured independently of drug condition after 4 sessions of virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET).

The study introduced a new treatment for fear of flying. Research suggests that yohimbine hydrochloride (YOH), a noradrenaline agonist, can facilitate fear extinction. It is thought that the mechanism of enhanced emotional memory is stimulated through elevated noradrenaline levels.

The Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment has discovered a new type of neutrino oscillation in which the particles appear to vanish as they travel. The rate of oscillations was much larger than many scientists had expected, which could open the gateway to a new understanding of fundamental physics and may eventually solve the riddle of why the universe today is dominated by matter as opposed to antimatter.

It seems obvious that when a culture can eat more than it needs to survive, many people will.. When even the poorest people can afford to be fat, they are happy.

Researchers from Rice University and the University of Colorado did an analysis of survey results and found that while growth of developing countries may improve conditions such as malnutrition and infectious disease, it may also increase obesity among people with lower socio-economic status.  This troubles them, though it is unclear why. Being fat is better than starving.

The most logical and intuitive place to seek the mind is in the human brain. Neuroscience can observe the workings of perception, memory, thinking, and emotions by using imaging devices to see which sections of the brain light up while it’s performing different functions. 

Do Imaging Devices tell us about Subjective Experience?

We see chemical and electric signals, in oscillating and bursting patterns, sending communications throughout the brain as study subjects perform mental functions. But, there has been no way to find out what subjective experience is, other than studying how it seems to correlate with these brain images and electrical signals.

You may have heard about certain potential dangers of nanotechnology; I like to write about some of them on occasion; and you probably know about the almost lost battle against so called superbugs, those pesky bacteria that evolved in hospitals to become resistant against all our drugs. Now combine these for something a little more scary: Fast-track evolution towards superbugs.

There have been several implementations of two wheeled balancing robots [example]. And several which can read sheet music via a camera [example]. Others can ‘sing’ [example] – but the number of two-wheeled balancing robots that can autonomously read music and sing songs is low – possibly numbering just one.

Archaea, one of the three "domains of life" on Earth - the other two being bacteria and eukaryota (plants and animals) - strangely do not seem to be part of any food chain.

But maybe they soon will be - and it just might help solve future climate change issues. Archaea, a type of single-celled microorganism, perform many key ecosystem services including being involved with nitrogen cycling, and they are known to be the main mechanism by which marine methane is kept out of the atmosphere. 

A new high-precision 3-D printer at TU Vienna is orders of magnitude faster than similar devices and opens up completely new areas of application, such as in medicine. "Two-photon lithography" means tiny structures on a nanometer scale can be fabricated quicker than ever.

Their 3-D printer uses a liquid resin, which is hardened at precisely the correct spots by a focused laser beam. The focal point of the laser beam is guided through the resin by movable mirrors and leaves behind a polymerized line of solid polymer, just a few hundred nanometers wide. This high resolution enables the creation of intricately structured sculptures as tiny as a grain of sand.

 Researchers from the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine are contending that  consumption of dietary trans fatty acids (dTFAs) is associated with irritability and aggression. 

Their survey of 945 men and women led them to link dTFAs with adverse behaviors that impacted others, ranging from impatience to overt aggression.  Dietary trans fatty acids are primarily products of hydrogenation, which makes unsaturated oils solid at room temperature. They are present at high levels in margarines, shortenings and prepared foods. Adverse health effects of dTFAs have been identified in lipid levels, metabolic function, insulin resistance, oxidation, inflammation, and cardiac health.