Just another short post on Nibiru following on from my recent petition calling for responsible mainstream journalist reporting on "doomsday stories". It's featuring in many mainstream news sites again. Thank goodness one paper, the Independent, has run a straight hoax debunking story on it. "‘Blood moon’ and ‘rogue planet Nibiru’ are on their way to kill us all, conspiracy theorists wrongly claim", kudos to them. Hurrah! It's the first straightforward Nibiru debunking article I've seen in the mainstream newspapers in the last year (since I started writing these articles). I hope this is a start of a new trend.

When we go hungry, we have the ability to ignore the urge to eat such that we can carry out the task at hand. It has long been known that the brain is involved in such decisions. But how the brain coordinates the response to nutritional stress so that the body can function normally is not understood very well. Now, researchers from the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bangalore, have discovered a brain circuit that allows fruit flies to take a major developmental step in their lives despite nutritional stress.

Fertility experts are calling on the companies who make the solutions in which embryos are cultured during in vitro fertilisation (IVF) to give a clear list of ingredients following publication of a trial that shows that the composition of these laboratory cultures affects the outcomes of the resulting embryos and babies.

The first randomised controlled trial (RCT) to look at the effect on perinatal outcomes of different IVF culture media found that they affected the numbers of viable embryos created, the rates of successful implantation in the womb, the pregnancy rates and the babies' birthweights.

How do you boil water? Eschewing the traditional kettle and flame, MIT engineers have invented a bubble-wrapped, sponge-like device that soaks up natural sunlight and heats water to boiling temperatures, generating steam through its pores.

The design, which the researchers call a "solar vapor generator," requires no expensive mirrors or lenses to concentrate the sunlight, but instead relies on a combination of relatively low-tech materials to capture ambient sunlight and concentrate it as heat. The heat is then directed toward the pores of the sponge, which draw water up and release it as steam.

PHILADELPHIA, Aug. 22, 2016 -- More than a hundred years ago, Ivan Pavlov conducted what would become one of the most famous and influential psychology studies -- he conditioned dogs to salivate at the ringing of a bell. Now, scientists are able to see in real time what happens in the brains of live animals during this classic experiment with a new technique. Ultimately, the approach could lead to a greater understanding of how we learn, and develop and break addictions.

Scientists will be presenting their work today at the 252nd National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS). ACS, the world's largest scientific society, is holding the meeting here through Thursday. It features more than 9,000 presentations on a wide range of science topics.

SEATTLE -- Ramen noodles are supplanting the once popular cigarettes as a form of currency among state prisoners, but not in response to bans on tobacco products within prison systems, finds a new study.

Instead, study author Michael Gibson-Light, a doctoral candidate in the University of Arizona School of Sociology, found that inmates are trying to figure out ways to better feed themselves as certain prison services are being defunded.

The rise of ramen as currency in prison signals "punitive frugality," indicating that the burden and cost of care is shifting away from prison systems and onto prisoners and their support networks, said Gibson-Light, who will present his research at the 111th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association (ASA).

Youth cyberbullying is dramatically more likely to occur between current or former friends and dating partners than between students who were never friends or in a romantic relationship, according to researchers.

"A common concern regarding cyberbullying is that strangers can attack someone, but here we see evidence that there are significant risks associated with close connections," said Diane Felmlee, professor of sociology, Penn State. "The large magnitude of the effects of close relationships on the likelihood of cyberbullying, even after controlling for many other factors, was particularly surprising."