Images of Saturn's auroras as the planet's magnetic field is battered by charged particles from the Sun have led a team to claim decisive evidence for the hypothesis that Saturn's auroral displays are often caused by the dramatic collapse of its "magnetic tail".

Just like comets, planets such as Saturn and the Earth have a "tail" – known as the magnetotail – that is made up of electrified gas from the Sun and flows out in the planet's wake.

When a particularly strong burst of particles from the Sun hits Saturn, it can cause the magnetotail to collapse, with the ensuing disturbance of the planet's magnetic field resulting in spectacular auroral displays. A very similar process happens here on Earth.

ATS 2014, SAN DIEGO ─ Despite being touted by their manufacturers as a healthy alternative to cigarettes, e-cigarettes appear in a laboratory study to increase the virulence of drug- resistant and potentially life-threatening bacteria, while decreasing the ability of human cells to kill these bacteria

Researchers at the VA San Diego Healthcare System (VASDHS) and the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), tested the effects of e-cigarette vapor on live methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and human epithelial cells. MRSA commonly colonizes the epithelium of the nasopharynx, where the bacteria and epithelial cells are exposed constantly to inhaled substances such as e-cigarette vapor and cigarette smoke.

Physicists say they have discovered how to create matter from light - a feat thought impossible when the idea was first theorized 80 years ago. There is just one problem. In order to test the newest hypothesis, a new& machine would have to be built.

In just one day over several cups of coffee in a tiny office at Imperial College London, three physicists believe they worked out a relatively simple way to physically prove a theory first devised by scientists Breit and Wheeler in 1934. Yes, they solved a puzzle that has eluded the rest of the world in an afternoon. Well, on paper.

There is a reason why peeing in your house is not actually a good idea - but some doctors have perpetuated the idea that urine is sterile by using that as a test for urinary tract infections.

Not that you should ever use Wikipedia for anything, but the non-expert hacktivists there botch the urine entry as further evidence. And every year the myth is debunked but it persists.

Bacteria live in the bladders of healthy women, researchers from Loyola University Chicago noted again, this time at the 114th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in Boston.

The vast majority of so-called "super-frequent user" patients who seek care in the Emergency Department - a patient is considered a super-frequent user if they visit the emergency room at least 10 times a year  - have a substance abuse addiction, according to a Henry Ford Hospital analysis.

ER physicians have long said that patients who frequent the ER for their care have a substance abuse addiction but few studies have actually measured the rate of addiction of these patients.

The  findings presented Saturday at the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine (SAEM) annual meeting in Dallas found that super-frequent users seeking pain-relief narcotics were more often women. 

The study's key findings:

Are you worried that genetically modified corn will imperil the earth and ruin your organic sticker status if the air blows toward your fields?

Horticulturalists have a solution; let science grow transgenic crops that can feed billions and create high-value medicinal antibodies. Organic believes can put their corn in caves. 

Athens, 17 May 2014: Negative iron balance predicts survival in patients with acute heart failure, according to research presented for the first time today at the Heart Failure Congress 2014 in Athens, Greece. The Congress is the main annual meeting of the Heart Failure Association of the European Society of Cardiology.

Professor Ewa Jankowska, first author of the study, said: "Patients with acute heart failure have a major collapse in homeostasis. Iron is a key micronutrient that is required for the maintenance of homeostasis. Iron is needed for cellular metabolism and deficiency leads to severely impaired energy metabolism and mitochondrial dysfunction."

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today allowed marketing of the DEKA Arm System, the first prosthetic arm that can perform multiple, simultaneous powered movements controlled by electrical signals from electromyogram (EMG) electrodes.

Deka calls it "Luke", after Luke Skywalker of "Star Wars" fame, and the project was funded by DARPA.

EMG electrodes detect electrical activity caused by the contraction of muscles close to where the prosthesis is attached. The electrodes send the electrical signals to a computer processor in the prosthesis that translates them to a specific movement or movements.