When we talk about sight or hearing, the mechanisms that lead us to distinguish two colors or two notes have been well-established and translated into practical use. For example, we know which wavelength will appear red and which frequency will make us hear a G note.

We have not made similar progress with smell; we are not able to say how a molecule smells just by looking at its chemical structure.

A new paper examines the brain processes involved in the continuous flow of information arriving from our sense of smell. 

Music training can make us well-rounded, it may change the way we think, and music is fun, but claims that it makes kids smarter may have hit a sour note.

Smart people often play musical instruments as well, so that has led to research trials seeking a causal link between music training and improved cognitive and academic performance, but they have reached conflicting conclusions. Some did suggest - a lot of bad epidemiology happens with that word so caution is warranted - that there may be a link between music training and better cognitive and academic performance. Others found no impact.

In a COVID-19 world, you may not want to visit a doctor but that doesn't mean you have to avoid seeing one.  A new RAND evaluation recommends that clinics even hire a telemedicine coordinator to head their efforts and that they consider offering telemedicine services to patients from their homes.  

It can happen with with modest investments in new staff and technology and can even help expand patients' access to specialized medical care.

Though the world is facing on obesity crisis, at least in the U.S. the culprit is not sugar, it's too many calories of other kinds.

Americans are actually eating less sugar than two decades ago, partially thanks to non-nutritive sweeteners.

The analysis used a nationally representative dataset on household purchases at the barcode level (Nielsen Homescan) in 2002 and 2018 linked with Nutrition Facts Panel (NFP) data and ingredient information using commercial nutrition databases that are updated regularly to capture reformulations. Keyword searches were performed on ingredient lists to classify products containing various types of non-nutritive sweeteners.

Don't be fooled by those tourist volcanoes that reliably produce small basaltic lava eruptions. A new study shows they hide the same chemically diverse magmas in their underground plumbing systems as volcanoes that generate explosive activity.

Some volcanoes in Iceland, Hawai'i and the Galápagos Islands consistently produce lava flows of molten basaltic rock which form long rivers of fire down their flanks. They are so slow, you can outwalk them, and therefore so predictable you can visit them but unless you build a house in front of one, they are safe. 

Yet they share chemistry in common with Vesuvius or Mt. St. Helens, which means they are not as timid as we think.

Using the genome-editing technology CRISPR, researchers can make targeted cuts to the genome or insert useful genes, called a gene knock-in, and they have done it with the cattle SRY gene, responsible for initiating male development, into a bovine embryo.

This first demonstration of a targeted gene knock-in for large sequences of DNA via embryo-mediated genome editing in cattle will mean it produces male offspring 75 percent of the time.

That's not to increase sexism, it's a benefit because male cattle are about 15 percent more efficient at converting feed into weight gain than females. That keeps costs low, especially on the checklist now when we have seen how precarious food supply can be for the poor, and it's better for the environment.