Rhythmic activity of nerve cells supports spatial navigation, say a group of researchers who recently showed that cells in the entorhinal cortex, important for spatial navigation, oscillate with individual frequencies. These frequencies depend on the position of the cells within the entorhinal cortex.

Rotten oranges can be detected manually in dark rooms with the help of ultraviolet light that illuminates the essential oils in damaged rind through fluorescence but that type of light poses some risk on fruit quality, like a reduction in vitamin C.

Scientists at the Valencian Institute of Agrarian Research (IVIA, Spain) have created prototypes for machines that not only detect and automatically separate rotten oranges, but can also detect mandarin segments according to quality and helps citrus fruit pickers out in the field. All the prototypes use computer vision to automatically inspect the fruits.

There may be a sexual upside to an economic downside; more sex.  Maybe 'stimulus plan' means different things to different people.

Omri Gillath at the University of Kansas says men are likely to pursue short-term mating strategies when faced with a threatening environment, according to sexual selection theory based on evolutionary psychology.  How did he determine that?  He and colleagues told men to think about their own deaths, which mimics conditions of 'low survivability' and they found that men responded more vigorously to sexual pictures and had increased heart rates when viewing them, compared to when they thought about dental pain.

In gene therapy, one or more desired genes are introduced into an adenovirus, a virus that causes the common cold, which is then administered to the patient. Once in the body, the virus enters targeted cells and delivers the desired genes. In heart disease patients, for example, the virus delivers genes that trigger the growth of new blood vessels in damaged heart muscle.

Every 100,000 years a "super-eruption" of a major volcanic system occurs - one of the most catastrophic natural events on Earth - yet it's hard to know what triggers these violent explosions.

The eruption of super-volcanoes dwarfs the eruptions of recent volcanoes and can trigger planetary climate change by inducing Ice Ages and other impacts. One such event was the Huckleberry Ridge eruption of present-day Yellowstone Park about two million years ago, which was more than 2,000 times larger than the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington. These super-eruptions are second only to meteor strikes in their impact.