Eating too many calories throws critical portions of the brain out of whack, reveals a study in the journal Cell. That response in the brain's hypothalamus — the "headquarters" for maintaining energy balance — can happen even in the absence of any weight gain, according to new studies done in mice.

The brain response involves a molecular player, called IKKß/NF-?B, which is known to drive metabolic inflammation in other body tissues. The discovery suggests that treatments designed to block this pathway in the brain might fight the ever-increasing spread of obesity and related diseases, including diabetes and heart disease.

"This pathway is usually present but inactive in the brain," said Dongsheng Cai of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Cai said he isn't sure exactly why IKKß/NF-?B is there and ready to spring into action in the brain. He speculates it may have been an important element for innate immunity, the body's first line of defense against pathogenic invaders, at some time in the distant past.

Obviously in the instance of a severe pandemic influenza outbreak, doctors, nurses, and firefighters are essential but so are truck drivers, communications personnel, and utility workers, according to the conclusions of a Johns Hopkins University article in Biosecurity and Bioterrorism.

The report, led by Nancy Kass, Sc.D, Deputy Director of Public Health for the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, provides ethical guidance for pandemic planning that ensures a skeletal infrastructure remain intact at all times. Dr. Kass says, "when preparing for a severe pandemic flu it is crucial for leaders to recognize that if the public has limited or no access to food, water, sewage systems, fuel and communications, the secondary consequences may cause greater sickness death and social breakdown than the virus itself."

Dr. Costas Karageorghis of Brunel University’s School of Sport and Education today revealed a study stating that carefully selected music can significantly increase a person’s physical endurance and make the experience of cardiovascular exercise far more positive.

The study in the Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology is the latest from a 20-year program of work into the motivational qualities of music in sport and exercise. The findings illustrate the considerable benefits associated with exercising in time to music: something that some elite athletes, such as marathon world record holder Haile Gebrselassie, have been doing for years.

The scientific principles that guided this piece of research are about to be put into action through an ambitious sporting event due to take place on October 5th in Greenwich, London. The Sony Ericsson Run To The Beat half-marathon will be the first to provide scientifically-selected live musical accompaniment along the entire length of the course. Dr. Karageorghis has selected and coordinated the music that will be played at 17 live music stations to accompany 12,500 runners.

Rigid television screens, bulky laptops and still image posters are one step close to being a thing of the past.

New research published by researchers from Sony and the Max Planck Institute in the New Journal of Physics demonstrate the possibility of bendable optically assessed organic light emitting displays for the first time, based on red or IR-A light upconversion.

The research makes feasible the design of computers that can be folded up and put in your pocket, the mass-production of moving image posters for display advertising, televisions which can be bended to view or, even, newspaper display technology which allows readers to upload daily news to an easy-to-carry display contraption.

You've heard the same cliche time and again: candidates will need to 'reach beyond' their respective political bases to appeal to a larger-than-usual body of independent voters.

In actuality, there are about five independent voters and the rest are just people who won't be bothered to vote unless they are inspired. With both parties emphasizing 'making history' or 'making a change' rather than actually having a good plan and a solid candidate, behavioral scholars have a solution to appeal to that magical broader audience - accentuate the negative in the other party.

It's not the same old negative politics, like attacking the other candidate by running ads showing kids being blown up in a nuclear holocaust or freed convicts who murdered again. It is instead 'negational identity' and it means building coalitions by reminding people who they do not want to be.

The “birth rate” for stars is certainly not easy to determine. Distances in the universe are far too great for astronomers to be able to count all the newly formed celestial bodies with the aid of a telescope so it is fortunate that emerging stars give themselves away by a characteristic signal known as “H-alpha” emissions.

The larger the number of stars being formed in a particular region of the firmament, the more H-alpha rays are emitted from that region.

More newborn stars are apparently emerging around the universe than previously assumed, say researchers at Bonn University who published a paper in “Nature” explaining that a systematic error in the method of estimation has resulted in a lower number.