A new meta-analysis showing the effectiveness of ketamine for dealing with persistent post-surgical pain (PPSP) is to be presented at Euroanaesthesia 2016 (London, May 27-30 ). Ketamine, a cheap and safe drug, may have the potential to save health systems billions of dollars globally by being used in place of other drugs to prevent PPSP.

Mindfulness is about paying attention to the present moment in a non-judgmental way. The practitioner learns to avoid dwelling on the past or worrying about the future. This can be difficult, especially for people suffering from anxiety and depression, but, if achieved, it can bring lasting relief.

NHS mental health services are increasingly offering a therapy called mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) which is, as the name suggests, based on mindfulness skills. MBCT is an evidence-based group therapy. It combines training in mindfulness skills and practices with cognitive therapy (learning about managing and changing one’s negative thought patterns).

Warning: this article contains spoilers for those not up to date with Game of Thrones season six.

Events in HBO’s Game of Thrones TV series have got people talking about what it means to return from the dead. But while resurrection appears to be a very real possibility for some of the religions of mythical Westeros – not least Jon Snow’s resurrector, the “red priestess”, Melisandre – what can the Bible add to the discussion?

Mammals have an exquisitely tuned sensory system that tells them whether they are smelling an orange or a rose. Like keys on a piano keyboard, each component of an odor blend strikes only one chord of olfactory neuron activation. These chords are combined to form a melody that is "heard" in the brain as distinctly citrusy or sweet and flowery.

Smell in mammals turns out to be more complex than we thought. Rather than one receptor family exclusively dedicated to detecting odors, a study in mice reports that a group of neurons surrounding the olfactory bulb use an alternative mechanism for catching scents. These "necklace" neurons, as they're called, use this newly discovered olfactory detection system to respond to odors that elicit instinctive responses, such as pheromones and the smell of seeds and nuts. Harvard researchers report the finding May 26 in Cell.

Malnourished children are most likely to die from common infections, not starvation. New experimental evidence, reviewed May 26 in Trends in Immunology, indicates that even with a healthy diet, defects in immune system function from birth could contribute to a malnourished state throughout life. Researchers speculate that targeting immune pathways could be a new approach to reduce the poor health and mortality caused by under- and overnutrition.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Energy Information released a report projecting that by 2040, world energy consumption will have grown by 48% from 2012 levels.  

That sounds like a terrific advancement for developing nations.  We worry about water in other countries, we worry about food, we worry about education and culture. Every single one of those is resolved with affordable energy. Energy is the great equalizer and America's second most important strategic resource after, obviously, food. 

The news that the Department of Defense had found a woman in Pennsylvania with a strain of E. coli carrying the gene mcr-1, the first time plasmid-mediated resistance to colistin (MCR) has been found in the United States, should have brought calls to action, because MCR creates resistance against colistin, a powerful antibiotic seldom prescribed due to side effects that remains effective as a last resort.

Instead it brought political posturing. Democratic Rep. Louise M. Slaughter (NY-25) immediately demonized farmers and drug companies - again.

Through new experiments involving the famous Schrödinger cat state paradox, researchers have shown that a "quantum cat" can be both alive and dead, and in two places at once.

The results, which involve inducing a large number of photons to have matching states (or to become entangled), show the ability to manipulate complex quantum states, with applications for computation and long-distance communication. They also represent perhaps the first time scientists have been able to achieve such quantum coherence at a macroscopic scale. 

A research team co-led by a scientist at New Zealand's University of Otago has sequenced the first complete mitochondrial genome of a 2500-year-old Phoenician dubbed the "Young Man of Byrsa" or "Ariche".

This is the first ancient DNA to be obtained from Phoenician remains and the team's analysis shows that the man belonged to a rare European haplogroup -- a genetic group with a common ancestor -- that likely links his maternal ancestry to locations somewhere on the North Mediterranean coast, most probably on the Iberian Peninsula.

The findings are newly published in the prestigious international journal PLOS ONE.