CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Humans, like all social animals, have a fundamental need for contact with others. This deeply ingrained instinct helps us to survive; it's much easier to find food, shelter, and other necessities with a group than alone. Deprived of human contact, most people become lonely and emotionally distressed.

In a study appearing in the Feb. 11, 2016 issue of Cell, MIT neuroscientists have identified a brain region that represents these feelings of loneliness. This cluster of cells, located near the back of the brain in an area called the dorsal raphe nucleus (DRN), is necessary for generating the increased sociability that normally occurs after a period of social isolation, the researchers found in a study of mice.

BATON ROUGE - For the first time, scientists have observed ripples in the fabric of spacetime, called gravitational waves, arriving at the earth from a cataclysmic event in the distant universe. This confirms a major prediction of Albert Einstein's 1915 general theory of relativity and opens an unprecedented new window onto the cosmos.

Gravitational waves carry information about their dramatic origins and about the nature of gravity that cannot otherwise be obtained. Physicists have concluded that the detected gravitational waves were produced during the final fraction of a second of the merger of two black holes to produce a single, more massive spinning black hole. This collision of two black holes had been predicted but never observed.

WASHINGTON -- High school students may improve their science grades by learning about the personal struggles and failed experiments of great scientists such as Albert Einstein and Marie Curie, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association.

In the study, 402 9th- and 10th-grade students from four New York City high schools in low-income areas of the Bronx and Harlem were divided into three groups. The control group read an 800-word typical science textbook description about the great accomplishments of Einstein, Curie and Michael Faraday, an English scientist who made important discoveries about electromagnetism.

A discovery in a transparent roundworm has brought scientists one step closer to understanding nerve degeneration.

University of Queensland researchers have discovered the worm contains two proteins that play a role in the degeneration of axons in nerve cells.

Project leader Associate Professor Massimo Hilliard, from the Queensland Brain Institute, said axons - long, thread-like nerve cell sections that transmit information - were one of the first parts destroyed in neurodegenerative disease.

Want to suck all of the fun out of romance and dating? Talk with a humanities scholar in family dating research. 

Just in time for Valentine's Day, a University of Illinois academic has identified four distinct approaches that dating couples use to develop deeper commitment. "The four types of dating couples that we found included the dramatic couple, the conflict-ridden couple, the socially involved couple, and the partner-focused couple," said Brian Ogolsky, assistant professor of human development and family studies.

The Oxford Dictionaries selected "vape"--as in, to smoke from an electronic cigarette or inhalation device --as word of the year in 2014. Internet users' search behavior tells a similar story.