Dopamine, the neurotransmitter celebrity chemical du jour in brain stories, gets invoked a lot because it can make a lot of correlations possible - and that means fun for journalists who either want to highlight the ridiculous or scare you. 

Like guns? Dopamine. Are you a Democrat? Dopamine. But aside from its 'pleasure chemical' designation, dopamine has lots of roles in the brain. So if a man takes antipsychotic medication, he may lactate as a side effect, because those medications focus on dopamine. And if there is an addiction story, dopamine is invoked.

A promising anti-cancer therapy - suppression of the protein mammalian target Of Rapamycin  (mTOR) - has failed to achieve hoped-for success in killing tumor cells.

mTOR plays an important role in regulating how cells process molecular signals from their environment, and it is observed as strongly activated in many solid cancers. Drug-induced suppression of mTOR has until now shown success in causing the death of cancer cells in the outer layers of cancerous tumors, but has been disappointing in clinical trials in dealing with the core of those tumors.  

Interacting with a therapeutic robot companion made people with mid- to late-stage dementia less anxious and also had a positive influence on their quality of life, according to a pilot study

PARO, a robotic harp seal, was used to investigate the effect of interacting with an artificial companion compared with participation in a reading group. PARO is fitted with artificial intelligence software and tactile sensors that allow it to respond to touch and sound. It can show emotions such as surprise, happiness and anger, can learn its own name and learns to respond to words that its owner uses frequently.

How lifeless materials became organic molecules that are the bricks of animals and plants is a science question for the ages.

The world's first known odd couple: 250 million years ago, a mammal forerunner and an amphibian shared a burrow in South Africa.

Scientists scanning a 250 million-year-old fossilized burrow from the Karoo Basin of South Africa have discovered that two unrelated vertebrate animals nestled together and were fossilized after being trapped by a flash flood event. Facing harsh climatic conditions subsequent to the Permo-Triassic (P-T) mass extinction, the amphibian Broomistega and the mammal forerunner Thrinaxodon cohabited in a burrow.

It's mind over mechanics. A group in the University of Minnesota's College of Science and Engineering have developed a new noninvasive system that allows people to control a flying robot using only their mind.

It sounds fun but it also has the potential to help people who are paralyzed or have neurodegenerative diseases. 

Five subjects (three female and two male) who took part in the study were each able to successfully control the four-blade flying robot, also known as a quadcopter, quickly and accurately for a sustained amount of time.