The horns of creatures as different as elk and rhinoceros beetles - along with other decorative, mate-attracting structures -  are sensitive to changes in nutrition. They aren’t diabetic, but they are insulin-dependent; if they want to grow big horns and therefore attract mates.

Prior to World War II and dating back to the 1890s, the phrases “social technology” and “social engineering” carried strong connotations of central planning. This became particularly true in the Soviet Union, where the terms appeared in various tracts.

Parkinson’s disease is the second most common neurodegenerative disease after Alzheimer’s disease.

Now patients are getting some high-tech help. REMPARK (Personal Health Device for the Remote and Autonomous Management of Parkinson’s Disease) is a wearable monitoring and actuation system that identifies the motor status of Parkinson’s patients in real time. The system will also determine what phase a patient is in while walking or performing everyday activities and provide a cue to initiate movement when a gait-freezing episode occurs.

Can modern physicists examine ancient myths and teach us about modern social networks, even science ones like Science 2.0?

Pesky humanities types are always butting into science and a new article in EPL (Europhysics Letters) turns the tables.  Pádraig Mac Carron and Ralph Kenna from Coventry University performed detailed text analyses of the Iliad, Beowulf and the Táin Bó Cuailnge and found that the interactions between the characters in all three myths were consistent with those seen in real-life social networks. Taking this further, the researchers compared the myths to four known works of fiction -- Les Misérables, Richard III, Fellowship of the Ring, and Harry Potter -- and found clear differences.

Null results are important in science, but that doesn't mean scientists want other people to see theirs. The reason is obvious: competition.  If one group has a null result and another group is working on something similar, they potentially give the competitor a shortcut by publishing a negative result.

So it goes in just about every field. The food industry has its own null results, but they can be a lot more expensive.  The failure rate of new product launches is a shocking (to outsiders) 50%. It seems shocking because these are experts, armed with expensive demographic analyses and psychological information on the marketplace. They should know what people want.