Sleeping not only protects memories from being forgotten, it also makes them easier to access, according to new research which suggest that after sleep we are more likely to recall facts which we could not remember while still awake.

In two situations where subjects forgot information over the course of 12 hours of wakefulness, a night's sleep was shown to promote access to memory traces that had initially been too weak to be retrieved.

The research tracked memories for novel, made-up words learned either prior to a night's sleep, or an equivalent period of wakefulness. Subjects were asked to recall words immediately after exposure, and then again after the period of sleep or wakefulness. 

A new study by researchers at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute (SBP), the National Cancer Institute, and the Chulabhorn Research Institute has found that blocking the activity of a key immune receptor, the lymphotoxin-beta receptor (LTβR), reduces the progression of liver cancer. The results, published today in the online edition of Gut, could provide new treatment strategies for the disease, which is the third leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide.

A new University of Michigan study finds that teens using marijuana for medical reasons are 10 times more likely to say they are hooked on marijuana than youth who get marijuana illegally.

The study is the first to report on a nationally representative sample of 4,394 high school seniors and their legal or illegal medical marijuana use as it relates to other drug use. In the study, 48 teens had medical marijuana cards, but 266 teens used medical marijuana without a card.

“I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand,

Walkin' through the streets of Soho in the rain,

He was lookin' for the place called Lee Ho Fooks,

Gonna get a big dish of beef chow mein.”

Aaahoo! …."

Warren Zevon, 1978

Researchers studying wild banded mongooses in Uganda have discovered that these small mammals have either cooperative or selfish personalities which last for their entire lifetime.

The researchers investigated the selfish behavior of mongoose mate-guarding - where dominant males guard particular females - and the cooperative behavior of 'babysitting' and 'escorting' the young.

They found that cooperative mongooses that helped out with offspring care did so consistently over their whole lifetime but those that put in little effort never increased their workload.

Similar consistent behavior was found in mongooses that selfishly guarded mates for their entire life.

Antonio Aledo, Professor of Sociology at the University of Alicante, warns that "because of real estate speculation and the management of public budgets based on income from the real estate business, seismic risk has been forgotten."

As an example, he used the town of Torrevieja, where one of the biggest earthquakes in the province of Alicante took place in 1829 with more than 389 dead and 209 wounded. And things would not be much better now.

The rate of Australians dying from cancer is on a steady, downhill trajectory, thanks to powerful advances made in prevention, diagnosis and treatment of the disease. New data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare shows a promising outlook for those diagnosed with cancer.

Deaths from all cancers combined fell from 199 per 100,000 people in 1968, to 167 per 100,000 in 2012 - a decline of 2.6 deaths per 100,000 people per year.

“This confirms that we are steadily making improvements in most cancers, in terms of survival,” said Professor Timothy Hughes, Cancer Theme Leader at SAHMRI.

“And it’s coming from better prevention, better screening and better therapy.”