An important enzyme that acts in the nervous system may lead to new treatments for conditions such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.

Our cells contain a network of tubes known as microtubules that are made of protein and serve as tracks for the shuttling of materials from one part of the cell to another.   Microtubules in parts of neurons in the brain that send signals, for example, are loaded with chemical additions called acetylation marks. Microtubules in parts of neurons that receive signals, on the other hand, have few. 

Gossiping has benefits, according to research conducted by Dr. Jennifer Cole and Hannah Scrivener from Staffordshire University, who presented preliminary results at the British Psychological Society Social Psychology Section annual conference at the University of Winchester.

And praising someone in gossip may even lead to a short-term boost in gossipers' self-esteem.

Science can make you a better dancer - or at least improve your chances of not looking stupid to the opposite sex, say a group of evolutionary psychologists who used 3D motion-capture technology to create uniform avatar figures and identified the key movement areas of the male dancer’s body that influence female perceptions of whether their dance skills are “good” or “bad”. 

Apparently it all comes down to neck, trunk, left shoulder and wrist, the variability of movement size of the neck, trunk and left wrist, and the speed of movement of the right knee.

Sounds simple, right?  Read on.

We want to know some things in science are absolute yet we accept that a lot is relative.    The speed of light is absolute and so the same with respect to any observer in empty space but sound is relative, like when a train whistle goes from high to low as it passes the observer.  A longstanding quest in physics has been to determine whether chaos, in which tiny events lead to very large changes in the time evolution of a system, such as the universe, is absolute or relative in systems governed by general relativity, where the time itself is relative. 

Like right after the Big Bang.
 

A 19th century nursery rhyme called "What Are Little Boys Made Of?" and generally attributed to Robert Southey goes

"What are little boys made of?  What are little boys made of? Snips and snails and puppy-dogs' tails, that's what little boys are made of.
What are little girls made of? What are little girls made of? Sugar and spice and everything nice,
that's what little girls are made of."

But these days in Australia both genders, even only four weeks old, are made of sugar.  And salt and high-fat foods, despite health authorities recommending exclusive breastfeeding to six months of age.

While proponents of organic farming insist it can meet population projections and is better for wildlife, scientists at the Universities of Leeds and York say instead a balanced approach is superior.  At least for butterflies.

Their study found that organic farms have more butterflies than conventional farms but that a conventional farm plus an area specifically managed for wildlife could support more butterflies and produce the same amount of food from the same area of land.  Drawback: the wildlife area would have to be similar in quality to a nature reserve rather than similar to an uncultivated field margin, which boosts costs even more.