Akron, Ohio, Dec. 22, 2015 -- What drives you to Facebook? News? Games? Feedback on your posts? The chance to meet new friends?

If any of these hit home, you might have a Facebook dependency. But that's not necessarily a bad thing, says Amber Ferris, an assistant professor of communication at The University of Akron's Wayne College.

Ferris, who studies Facebook user trends, says the more people use Facebook to fulfill their goals, the more dependent on it the become. She is quick to explain this dependency is not equivalent to an addiction. Rather, the reason why people use Facebook determines the level of dependency they have on the social network. The study found those who use Facebook to meet new people were the most dependent on Facebook overall.

Almost 10 years ago, we created the Science 2.0 movement, which was geared toward modernizing science collaboration, publication, communication and participation. And then...not much changed. Science is, at its heart, competitive and there is no benefit for most scientists in collaborating. The person who puts something all together at the end will win a Nobel Prize and everyone else will get nothing.

On the smaller scale, everyone who wants government funding is competing for it, so collaboration will only help another lab avoid expensive mistakes or get to a result sooner. Science 2.0 was greeted with enthusiasm...for someone else, anyway.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- Animals from tiny worms to human beings have a love-hate relationship with fats and lipids. Cholesterol is a famous example of how they are both essential for health and often have a role in death. A new study reveals another way that may be true. Researchers, working in nematodes and mice, found that a naturally occurring protein responsible for transporting fats like cholesterol around the body also hinders essential functions in cells that increase life span.

Rational use of medicines remains to be one of the most challenging problems in health systems worldwide. Kazan Federal University researchers conducted a practical study to assess the impact of introducing evidence-based principles to the practice of medicine procurement in order to manage budget expenditures on medicines of a multidisciplinary health facility for the period of 2011-2014.

Researchers long have known that some portion of the risk of developing cancer is hereditary and that inherited genetic errors are very important in some tumors but much less so in others.

In a new analysis, researchers have shed light on these hereditary elements across 12 cancer types -- showing a surprising inherited component to stomach cancer and providing some needed clarity on the consequences of certain types of mutations in well-known breast cancer susceptibility genes, BRCA1 and BRCA2.

The study, from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, appears Dec. 22 in the journal Nature Communications.

Borrowing insights from techniques used to image cancer, Stanford scientists have devised a new method for generating "training images" that can be used to fine-tune models of uncertainty about underground physical processes and structures.

Having an accurate picture of the planet's subsurface is crucial for rational decision-making across a wide variety of activities, including environmental cleanup, oil and natural gas well-drilling, and the underground sequestration of greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change.