Facebook has more than 1.23 billion active users. Most of them are not actually friends with each other and because they are not friends with each other, they feel pushy recommending products or services. They're fine hammering on politics and religion, but endorsing a car looks too corporate.

That's bad news for Facebook's business model, which has so far convinced advertisers they need to spend money. Facebook has tinkered with everything from forcing contributors to pay to have their posts seen by people on their list to pushing ads more aggressively based on everything from browser cookies to media use on the PCs of members.

Moderate to severe diarrhea (MSD) is a major cause of childhood mortality in developing countries and ranks as one of the top four causes of death among young children in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. In a finding that may one day help control this major cause of death among children in developing countries, a team has identified microorganisms that may trigger diarrheal disease and others that may protect against it.

These microbes were not widely linked to the condition previously and a much better understanding of these interactions is important because they could lead to possible dietary interventions.  

If your glass is half full, you recognize that in recent geological history, 90,000 of every 100,000 years have been ice ages, and it's been 12,000 years since the last one. In that light, global warming might be a good thing.

Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists have shown regulatory proteins in the nucleus to adopt a kind of “Tom Sawyer” behavior when it comes to the work of initiating gene activation. 

Transcription factors are proteins that orchestrate the flow of genetic information from DNA to messenger RNA (mRNA) and the results show how transcription factors (TFs) activate mRNA synthesis of a gene, and leave the scene – in a model termed “hit-and-run” transcription.

Scientists at VIB and KU Leuven have demonstrated in fruit-flies that over-activity of the enzyme HDAC6 in the nerve ends exacerbates the symptoms of the neurodegenerative condition Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS / Lou Gehrig's Disease). Inhibition of this enzyme could offer a protective effect against ALS.

Due to the president making bee colonies a national priority, there is a lot of talk from environmentalists about banning neonicotinoid pesticides but they may be blaming out of convenience rather than evidence. 

Car and truck exhaust fumes can be bad for humans and for pollinators too. In new research on how pollinators find flowers when background odors are strong, University of Washington and University of Arizona researchers have found that both natural plant odors and human sources of pollution can conceal the scent of sought-after flowers.