Sociology scholars say the stereotype that Native Americans are genetically or psychologically predisposed to alcoholism are all smoke and no firewater. 

Instead, Native Americans were more likely to abstain from alcohol use than Caucasian Americans and there was no difference in Native Americans' binge and heavy drinking rates, according to surveys.

Australian researchers have found biochemical changes occurring in the blood, in the rare inherited form of Alzheimer's disease. Changes in these fat-like substances, may suggest a method to diagnose all forms of Alzheimer's disease before significant damage to the brain occurs.

In an article published today in the Journal of Alzheimer's disease, the Australian team led by Professor Ralph Martins from the CRC for Mental Health and Edith Cowan University, examined the lipid profiles of 20 people who carry a mutation responsible for the rare inherited form of Alzheimer's, known as familial Alzheimer's disease.

Rather than the treeless, limestone expanse we know today, the Plain was flush with gum and eucalyptus trees, banksias and other flowering plants now confined to Australia's east coast.

Scientists at the University of Melbourne used new techniques to date fossilised pollen and reveal the Plain's 'big wet' - a dramatic transformation in climate that occurred around five million years ago.

The finding sheds new light on the environmental history of the Nullarbor, a former seabed that was lifted above the sea 14 million years ago.

New evidence published today highlights benefits and harms of using artificial mesh when compared with tissue repair in the surgical treatment of vaginal prolapse. Slightly better repair with mesh needs to be weighed carefully against increased risk of harms.

A new Cochrane systematic review published today summarizes evidence that addresses a long-standing controversy in the surgical repair of vaginal prolapse. It will help women and surgeons to make better informed choices about surgical treatment and reinforces the need for careful consideration of the advantages and disadvantages of grafting artificial material compared with using tissue to repair the anatomy of the vagina.

Corn seedlings are especially susceptible to hungry insect herbivores, such as caterpillars and aphids, because they lack woody stems and tough leaves. So what's a tender, young corn plant to do?

A recent study by Professor Georg Jander's group at the Boyce Thompson Institute (BTI), finds that corn plants may make serious trade-offs when defending themselves against multiple types of insects. Some corn varieties make themselves more vulnerable to aphids after generating defensive compounds against nibbling caterpillars. The results, which appear in the journal Molecular Ecology, may lead to the development of corn plants that are naturally more resistant to certain insects.

After more than 300 years of looking, scientists have figured out how bacteria "see" their world. And they do it in a remarkably similar way to us.

A team of British and German researchers reveal in the journal eLife how bacterial cells act as the equivalent of a microscopic eyeball or the world's oldest and smallest camera eye.

"The idea that bacteria can see their world in basically the same way that we do is pretty exciting," says lead researcher Conrad Mullineaux, Professor of Microbiology from QMUL's School of Biological and Chemical Sciences from Queen Mary University of London (QMUL).

It is 5 years since the potential of social media was considered limitless. Not only was social media revolutionary, but it was literally capable of bringing about revolutions such as the uprisings of the “Arab Spring”. There was no part of our social lives that platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn could not change. Concepts like having a “social graph” became generally understood, as was the ability of those graphs to determine what we bought, how we felt, who our friends were and where we would work.

Imagine your child requires a life-saving operation. You enter the hospital and are confronted with a stark choice.

Do you take the traditional path with human medical staff, including doctors and nurses, where long-term trials have shown a 90% chance that they will save your child’s life?

Or do you choose the robotic track, in the factory-like wing of the hospital, tended to by technical specialists and an array of robots, but where similar long-term trials have shown that your child has a 95% chance of survival?

CHICAGO -- An international team of scientists have discovered two new plankton-eating fossil fish species of the genus called Rhinconichthys (Rink-O-nik-thees) from the oceans of the Cretaceous Period, about 92 million years ago, when dinosaurs roamed the planet.

Baltimore, Md., Feb. 8, 2015 -A multi-disciplinary group of researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UM SOM) have for the first time determined the genetic makeup of various strains of E. coli, which every year kills hundreds of thousands of people around the world.

The paper, which appears in a recent issue of Nature Microbiology, analyzed the DNA of Enteropathogenic Escherichia coli (EPEC), which are the strains of the bacteria that cause diarrhea.