A new study found that the ability to follow another's gaze or look in the direction someone is pointing, two examples of receptive joint attention, is significantly heritable.

Determining such communicative cues are significantly heritable means variation in this ability has a genetic basis, the authors say, which has led them to the vasopressin receptor gene, known for its role in social bonding.

They are looking for insight into the biology of disorders in which receptive joint attention is compromised, such as autism spectrum disorders (ASD), which could lead to new diagnosis and treatment strategies.

In 2005,the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa  revealed that the near-Earth asteroid (25143) Itokawa  has a strange peanut shape, leading to questions about why. Now, using ground-based observations, a group has measured the speed at which Itokawa spins and how that spin rate is changing over time and combined these observations with theoretical work on how asteroids radiate heat.

'Whole Grain', like 'Natural' and 'Organic', has a lot of definitions. Fortunately for marketing departments, people often read their own positive definitions into those terms.

But people invariably pay more for all of those things, so if they pay for organic, they deserve to know if it has any of dozens of synthetic ingredients (it probably does) or the levels of pesticides on it. And the same for other food terms. Toward that end, writers in Food and Nutrition Research have set out to create the most comprehensive definition of "whole grain" to-date, in order to assist in the production and labeling of foods 'rich in whole grains' as part of the HEALTHGRAIN EU project, which focuses on cereals and health.

In the MGM musical "Gigi", Maurice Chevalier and Hermione Gingold perform "I Remember It Well", wherein everything they remember contradicts each other.

It's a charming number, and accurate, according to a new Northwestern Medicine study. Our memory, the authors write, takes fragments of the present and inserts them into past memories. Recollections are updated with current information.

Sometimes it's just public relations. We subsidize nicotine patches but regulators are increasingly interested in banning electronic cigarettes.

Such misguided legislation, not backed by sound data, may have consequences for public health, experts say. With smoking blamed for up to six million premature deaths each year, a lot is at stake in the newest push for regulations.

A new paper correlates brain activity with how people make decisions.

Based on these images, the authors suggest that when individuals engage in risky behavior, such as drunk driving or unsafe sex, it's not because their brains' desire systems are too active, but because their self-control systems are not active enough. 

Defense lawyers now have a new way to make criminal behavior exculpatory. Unless the judge knows something about the weaknesses of inferring cause and effect based on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and read this article about how mainstream media love weak observational studies because they make for catchy headlines.