In the 1960s, "speed freaks", people hooked on amphetamines, still avoided Ritalin. It was too dangerous. In the 1990s, Ritalin suddenly became a medication. For kids diagnosed with ADD, it sped them up so much it basically slowed them down.

But for people who don't need it, ADD medication is just a stimulant, and nearly 20 percent of students at an Ivy League college reported misusing a prescription stimulant while studying, and one-third of students did not view such misuse as cheating according results presented today at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in Vancouver.

Researchers have identified a section of the anthrax toxin Lethal Factor that could help produce a more effective vaccine.

Anthrax is a potentially lethal disease caused by a bacterium called Bacillus anthracis. The bacteria produce spores that when inhaled, ingested or absorbed into the skin release toxins. When anthrax affects the lungs or intestines it can cause death within a few days whilst infection of the skin (cutaneous anthrax) is less dangerous.

Case Western Reserve researchers have discovered that a protein previously implicated in disease plays such a positive role in learning and memory that it may someday contribute to cures of cognitive impairments. The findings regarding the potential virtues of fatty acid binding protein 5 (FABP5) — usually associated with cancer and psoriasis — appear in the May 2 edition of The Journal of Biological Chemistry.

With the bursting of spring, pollen is in the air. Most of the pollen that is likely tickling your nose and making your eyes water is being dispersed in a sexually immature state consisting of only two cells (a body cell and a reproductive cell) and is not yet fertile. While the majority of angiosperm species disperse their pollen in this early, bicellular, stage of sexual maturity, about 30% of flowering plants disperse their pollen in a more mature fertile stage, consisting of three cells (a body and two sperm cells). And then there are plants that do both.

Findings and Significance: During breast-tissue development, a transcription factor called SLUG plays a role in regulating stem cell function and determines whether breast cells will mature into luminal or basal cells.

Studying factors, such as SLUG, that regulate stem-cell activity and breast-cell identity are important for understanding how breast tumors arise and develop into different subtypes. Ultimately, this knowledge may help the development of novel therapies targeted to specific breast-tumor subtypes.

In old movies, humans feared invaders from other planets, but they had better watch out for us.

In "War of the Worlds" we took out the Martians using nothing but microorganisms, so if imagine if we really tried.

Interplanetary exchange of organisms is little discussed in a summer movie world of "Independence Day" invaders, but three recent scientific papers examined the risks using research from the International Space Station.