Rather like an uncontacted tribe living deep in the Amazon rainforest or on an island in Oceania, WLM offers a rare insight into the primordial nature of galaxies that have been little disturbed by their environment.

WLM was discovered in 1909 by German astronomer Max Wolf, and identified as a galaxy some fifteen years later by astronomers Knut Lundmark and Philibert Jacques Melotte -- explaining the galaxy's unusual moniker. The dim galaxy is located in the constellation of Cetus (The Sea Monster) about three million light-years away from the Milky Way, which is one of the three dominant spiral galaxies in the Local Group.

A group of scholars believed that "mindfulness" meditation, practiced as a way to calm the mind,
could be a non-drug alternative to help decrease chronic low back pain that is psychosomatic, and set out to show it. 

Claims of chronic low back pain are a costly condition that plagues eight in 10 Americans at some point in their lives. A team at Group Health Research Institute compared a specific kind of meditation called mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) along with cognitive behavioral therapy, a kind of talk therapy, to see if these interventions might alleviate pain.

Women who sunbathe are likely to live longer than those who avoid the sun, even though sunbathers are at an increased risk of developing skin cancer. This paradox baffles oncologists and has suggested that the war on sunshine has been unjustified.

In a study appearing in the March 22/29 issue of JAMA, Ann Marie Navar, M.D., Ph.D., of Duke University Medical Center, Durham, N.C., and colleagues examined how shared clinical trial data are being used. Concerns over bias in clinical trial reporting have stimulated calls for more open data sharing. In response, multiple pharmaceutical companies have created mechanisms for investigators to access patient-level clinical trials data.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - A fungal disease that poses a serious threat to cacao plants - the source of chocolate - reproduces clonally, Purdue University researchers find.

The fungus Moniliophthora roreri causes frosty pod rot, a disease that has decimated cacao plantations through much of the Americas. Because M. roreri belongs to a group of fungi that produces mushrooms - the fruit of fungal sex - many researchers and cacao breeders believed the fungus reproduced sexually.

The effectiveness of e-cigarettes as a smoking substitute will likely rely on whether they can consistently provide the amount of nicotine a smoker needs to resist the desire to return to traditional cigarettes.

A recent study that evaluated a new method for measuring nicotine delivery from e-cigarettes found that 'first-generation' e-cigarettes, which use 'cartomizers', deliver nicotine less consistently than later-generation e-cigarettes, which use 'atomizers' that vaporize liquid contained in a refillable tank.

The consistency of nicotine delivery from the atomizers was similar to nicotine inhalers and tobacco cigarettes and within the acceptable limits for medicinal nebulizers.