Though we share superficial physical similarities, the cognitive differences between humans and our closest living cousins, the chimpanzees, are obvious - we metaphorically throw feces at each other while they do it literally. We have been able to use our superior mental abilities to construct civilizations and manipulate our environment to our will, allowing us to take over our planet and walk on the moon while the chimps grub around in a few remaining African forests.

Can you predict how sensitive your sense of taste is by sticking your tongue out and counting the bumps?

A long-standing hypothesis says this is so. But a little crowdsourcing of science - what used to be called doing a study - disproved that idea that "supertasters" owe their special sensitivity to bitter tastes to an usually high density of taste buds on their tongue, according to a paper in Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience.

Older people who undertake at least 25 minutes of moderate or vigorous exercise everyday need fewer prescriptions and are less likely to be admitted to hospital in an emergency, new research has revealed.

The findings, published in the journal PLOS ONE, reinforce the need for exercise programmes to help older people stay active. It could also reduce reliance on NHS services and potentially lead to cost savings.

In the first study of its kind looking at this age group, researchers from the University of Bristol looked at data from 213 people whose average age was 78.

A retrospective study used large population-based data to compare the risk of hospitalization for six common chemotherapy regimens.  The work gives in the Journal of Clinical Oncology gives oncologists a new understanding of the toxicity levels of specific chemotherapy regimens used for women with early stage breast cancer, according to the authors from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. 

 There have been several prior publications in the health services research field addressing chemotherapy toxicity using claims data, but they don't outline specific chemotherapy regimens. 

If you visit the best noodle houses in Asia, they will happily tell you their secret: The amino acid glutamate, boiled from dried seaweed or fermented soy, or gotten from a can, where it has been stabilized with salt and given the name monosodium glutamate (MSG). 

MSG is safe but some epidemiological and animal model studies have linked it to obesity and disorders associated with metabolic syndrome, including progressive liver disease. Other studies have disputed that.

The slopes of a giant Martian volcano nearly twice as tall as Mount Everest, called Arsia Mons, were once covered in glacial ice and they may have been home to one of the most recent habitable environments yet found on the Red Planet, according to new research.

Arsia Mons is the third tallest volcano on Mars and one of the largest mountains in the solar system. The new analysis of the landforms surrounding Arsia Mons shows that eruptions along the volcano's northwest flank happened at the same time that a glacier covered the region around 210 million years ago. The heat from those eruptions would have melted massive amounts of ice to form englacial lakes — bodies of water that form within glaciers like liquid bubbles in a half-frozen ice cube.