Research lab and hospital equipment are two areas where competition drives costs up - if Lab A has a need for a new piece of equipment, Lab B has to get it and that same goes for hospitals. Companies have no reason to undercut each other because the actual market is not that big. 

Help may be on the way for a commonly used piece of equipment: the syringe pump. A team led by an engineer at Michigan Technological University has published an open-source library of designs that will let scientists slash its cost. Syringe pumps are used to dispatch precise amounts of liquid, as for drug delivery or mixing chemicals in a reaction. They can also cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars.

An ultracompact dwarf galaxy known as M60-UCD1 harbors a supermassive black hole – the smallest galaxy known to contain such a massive light-sucking object.

The astronomers used the Gemini North 8-meter optical-and-infrared telescope on Hawaii's Mauna Kea and photos taken by the Hubble Space Telescope to discover that M60-UCD1 has a black hole with a mass equal to 21 million suns. Their finding suggests plenty of other ultracompact dwarf galaxies likely also contain supermassive black holes – and those dwarfs may be the stripped remnants of larger galaxies that were torn apart during collisions with yet other galaxies.

Is chimpanzee intergroup aggression like primitive warfare, an adaptive strategy that gives the perpetrators an edge, or is it the consequence of human activities, such as provisioning - artificial feeding - by researchers or habitat destruction?

A new study of the pattern of intergroup aggression in chimpanzees and pygmy chimpanzees (bonobos), their close relatives, finds that human impact isn't the culprit.   

The research project compiled data collected over five decades from 18 chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) and four bonobo (Pan paniscus) communities.

The United States is one of few wealthy nations without national or socialized health care and, as a result, the Hippocratic Oath has always been paramount. Even when it hasn't been efficient, doctors have tried to save and extend lives.

As a result, the US health care system is not culturally prepared to deal with patients nearing the end of life and their families.

A 21-member
Institute of Medicine

Northwestern Medicine researchers say they have developed the first blood test to diagnose major depression in adults, by measuring the levels of nine RNA blood markers.

RNA molecules are the messengers that interpret the DNA genetic code and carry out its instructions.