People buying fake 'luxury brand' goods experience a range of psychological motivations - including the 'thrill of the hunt' - new research has shown.

Consumer behavioural expert Dr Xuemei Bian, of the University of Kent, together with researchers from three other universities, carried out the first in-depth study of why consumer demand for counterfeit brands is growing.

The researchers found that the 'thrill of the hunt' and 'being part of a secret society' are often prime motivational factors behind purchases. They also found that, following the purchase of known counterfeit goods, people experienced a range of associated emotional outcomes, including shame and embarrassment as well as positive hedonistic feelings.

After being one of the few who picked the Mets to make it to the postseason in 2015, NJIT Mathematical Sciences Professor and Associate Dean Bruce Bukiet has published his projections of how the standings should look at the end of Major League Baseball's 2016 season.

And things look good for the Mets again.

Atmospheric scientists have found that California's highest temperatures are almost always associated with blocking ridges, regions of high atmospheric pressure than can disrupt wind patterns - including one known as the Ridiculously Resilient Ridge. The Triple R, as it's called, is also linked with California's drought.

In new research published online this week in the journal Science Advances, a team of researchers led by Stanford University scientist Noah Diffenbaugh analyzed the occurrence of large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns that occurred during California's historical precipitation and temperature extremes.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (April 3, 2016)--Women who underwent a nonsurgical, image-guided treatment, uterine fibroid embolization (UFE), for the treatment of uterine fibroids experienced improved sexual function and a higher overall quality of life. The research, part of a French multicenter study, presented at the Society of Interventional Radiology's Annual Scientific Meeting, also found the vast majority of women treated with UFE sustained improvement for more than a year.

It's been a while since the last time I talked about myself in this column. I think that a blog must contain personal information to be interesting - otherwise why sticking around, when there's tons of good (yes, also bad) information in the web ? But here you can get some particle physics information mixed in with things that, although you need not know or care about, it's fun to share and comment on. Or at least I hope it's so, for the few of you who read this.

The first largescale study of ancient DNA from early American people has confirmed the devastating impact of European colonisation on the Indigenous American populations of the time.

Led by the University of Adelaide's Australian Centre for Ancient DNA (ACAD), the researchers have reconstructed a genetic history of Indigenous American populations by looking directly into the DNA of 92 pre-Columbian mummies and skeletons, between 500 and 8600 years old.

Published today in Science Advances, the study reveals a striking absence of the pre-Columbian genetic lineages in modern Indigenous Americans; showing extinction of these lineages with the arrival of the Spaniards.

PULLMAN, Wash.--The heavily studied yet largely unexplained disappearance of ancestral Pueblo people from southwest Colorado is "the most vexing and persistent question in Southwestern archaeology," according to the New York Times.

But it's not all that unique, say Washington State University scientists. Writing in the journal Science Advances, they say the region saw three other cultural transitions over the preceding five centuries. The researchers also document recurring narratives in which the Pueblo people agreed on canons of ritual, behavior and belief that quickly dissolved as climate change hurt crops and precipitated social turmoil and violence.

Using reprogrammed iPS cells, scientists from the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology (CDB) in Japan have, along with collaborators from Tokyo University of Science and other Japanese institutions, successfully grown complex skin tissue--complete with hair follicles and sebaceous glands--in the laboratory. They were then able to implant these three-dimensional tissues into living mice, and the tissues formed proper connections with other organ systems such as nerves and muscle fibers. This work opens a path to creating functional skin transplants for burn and other patients who require new skin.

Scientists at ETH Zurich and IBM Research Zurich have developed a new technique that enables for the first time the manufacture of complexly structured tiny objects joining together microspheres. The objects have a size of just a few micrometres and are produced in a modular fashion, making it possible to program their design in such a way that each component exhibits different physical properties. After fabrication, it is also very simple to bring the micro-objects into solution. This makes the new technique substantially different from micro 3D printing technology. With most of today's micro 3D printing technologies, objects can only be manufactured if they consist of a single material, have a uniform structure and are attached to a surface during production.

The number of science and engineering graduate students at U.S. academic institutions rose by 3 percent between 2013 and 2014, owing largely to a 13.1 percent increase in foreign graduate enrollment.

According to a new report from the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, (NCSES) in 2014 a total of 587,161 students were enrolled in masters' or doctorate programs in science and engineering (S&E), up from a comparable number of 570,300 the previous year.

There was also an influx of nearly 25,000 additional S&E graduate students on temporary visas over the same period, bringing foreign enrollment to 213,783.