The amygdala, a small structure at the front end of the brain's temporal lobe, has long been associated with negative behaviors generally, and specifically with fear. But new research shows this collection of nuclei can also influence positive social functions like kindness and what might be called charitable giving in humans. 

Though politicians in Paris cheering a climate accord that 150 out of the 200 countries present have no intention of honoring is getting all of the attention, a more pressing concern is being ignored: a Zombie apocalypse.

Tara Smith, Associate Professor at Kent State University in Ohio says in the Christmas issue of The BMJ(1) that emerging zombie infections have been identified around the globe and, though sporadic, are becoming a source of greater concern to the medical and public health community.

The cycling World champion is significantly less successful during the year when he wears the rainbow jersey than in the previous year, and many have said this is due to a curse.

Thomas Perneger at Geneva University Hospital, Switzerland, put his intellectual petal to the metal to find out if this curse is real and details his work in the Christmas issue of The BMJ.(1)

The "rainbow" jersey is worn by the current cycling World champion (it is white, with bands of blue, red, black, yellow and green across the chest) and many cyclists believe that the World champion will be afflicted with all manner of misery while wearing the jersey- injury, disease, family tragedy, doping investigations, even death - but especially a lack of wins.

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (DEC. 15, 2015). Researchers have found little or no 'July effect' in the field of neurosurgery.

The 'July effect' is the theory that more medical and surgical errors, and, consequently, greater levels of morbidity and mortality occur during July, the month during which fourth year medical students become interns and residents advance to higher levels of training where they face greater challenges and more responsibility.

When we speak, we "leak" information about our social identity through the nuanced language that we use to describe others, according to new research in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. This research shows that people can infer a speaker's social identity (e.g., political party affiliation) from how the speaker uses abstract or concrete terms to describe someone else's behavior.

EUGENE, Ore. -- Dec. 14, 2015 -- Evolution is usually thought of as occurring over long time periods, but it also can happen quickly. Consider a tiny fish whose transformation after the 1964 Alaskan earthquake was uncovered by University of Oregon scientists and their University of Alaska collaborators.

The fish, seawater-native threespine stickleback, in just decades experienced changes in both their genes and visible external traits such as eyes, shape, color, bone size and body armor when they adapted to survive in fresh water. The earthquake -- 9.2 on the Richter scale and second highest ever recorded -- caused geological uplift that captured marine fish in newly formed freshwater ponds on islands in Prince William Sound and the Gulf of Alaska south of Anchorage.