It is a word we hear from time to time, but few of us know what it means.

Utilitarianism is the method most people use to decide whether an action is right or wrong. We decide the moral merits of what we do on whether the consequences of that action are good or bad. But utilitarianism has recently been in the firing line of the press and radio and by some moral philosophers.

A middle aged, male, investment banker arrives at the emergency department with complaints of nausea, vomiting, anxiety and tremor. At business lunches and then at home every evening, he was drinking too much so, worried about his health, he decided to quit drinking and had his last Scotch 24 hours before coming to the emergency room.

It's a common scenario in emergency rooms - a patient suddenly stops regular, excessive alcohol consumption and develops withdrawal symptoms.

Nitrite-oxidizing bacteria are key players in the natural nitrogen cycle on Earth and in biological wastewater treatment plants but scientists have learned something new about how they are powered. 

For decades, these specialist bacteria were thought to depend on nitrite as their source of energy researchers have now shown that nitrite-oxidizing bacteria can use hydrogen as an alternative source of energy. The oxidation of hydrogen with oxygen enables their growth independent of nitrite and a lifestyle outside the nitrogen cycle. 

Astrophysicists have detected the formation of radioactive cobalt during a supernova explosion, lending credence to a corresponding theory of supernova explosions. 

The article's main author, Yevgeny Churazov (Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences), and  co-authors, including Sergei Sazonov of the Space Research Institute and MIPT, reported the results of their analysis of data collected with the INTEGRAL gamma-ray orbital telescope, which they used to detect the radioactive isotope cobalt-56(56Co).

Using the Borexino instrument, located deep beneath Italy's Apennine Mountains and one of the most sensitive neutrino detectors on the planet, an international team of physicists has directly detected neutrinos created by the "keystone" proton-proton (pp) fusion process going on at the sun's core. 

The pp reaction is the first step of a reaction sequence responsible for about 99 percent of the Sun's power. Solar neutrinos are produced in nuclear processes and radioactive decays of different elements during fusion reactions at the Sun's core. These particles stream out of the star at nearly the speed of light, as many as 420 billion hitting every square inch of the Earth's surface per second. 

Why wild animals genetically changed into domesticated forms has long been a mystery, covered by the blanket artificial selection reasoning.

A new paper in Science says that many genes controlling the development of the brain and the nervous system were particularly important for rabbit domestication. 

Supersize me: buffet edition. Joanna Servaes, CC BY-NC

By Aaron Blaisdell, University of California, Los Angeles

Learning a new skill is easier when it is related to an ability we already have. For example, a trained pianist can learn a new melody easier than learning how to hit a tennis serve.

Scientists from the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition (CNBC) have discovered a fundamental constraint in the brain that may explain why this happens. Writing in Nature, they say that there are limitations on how adaptable the brain is during learning and that these restrictions are a key determinant for whether a new skill will be easy or difficult to learn. Understanding the ways in which the brain's activity can be "flexed" during learning could eventually be used to develop better treatments for stroke and other brain injuries.

There is a reason alternative medicine has an adjective in front of it - it can't survive double-blind clinical trials the way medicine has.

But at least it isn't harmful. In most cases. However, aconite, a class of plant that is also known as wolfsbane or devil's helmet and is in a poisonous genus of the buttercup family, recently led to facial tingling and numbness within minutes of ingesting, followed by nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and abdominal pain 30 minutes later. 

The herbal preparation by a Chinese herbal medication practitioner in Melbourne for back pain resulted in life-threatening heart changes, lead to new calls to educated the public and warn practitioners who prescribe "complementary" treatments instead of medication.