A Blog Around The Clock

How Well Do Dogs See At Night?:

A lot better than we do, says Paul Miller, clinical professor of comparative ophthalmology at University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Why Quitting Smoking Is So Difficult:

New findings clarify the brain mechanisms that explain many aspects of dependency on nicotine, the addictive substance in tobacco. Among them: Individual differences in brain chemistry can have a profound effect on a person's susceptibility to addiction, and smoking may predispose adolescents to mental disorders in adolescence and adulthood. In addition, researchers have identified a potential neural network that regulates the body's craving response and have demonstrated how smoking may affect decision-making.

For Migrating Sparrows, Kids Have A Compass, But Adults Have The Map:

Even bird brains can get to know an entire continent -- but it takes them a year of migration to do so, suggests a Princeton research team.

One In Five Young Britons Has Sex With Someone New While Abroad:

Around one in five young Britons has sex with a new partner while overseas, finds research published ahead of print in the journal Sexually Transmitted Infections.

How The Brain Sends Eyeballs Bouncing:

All vision, including reading this sentence, depends on a constant series of infinitesimal jumps by the eyeball that centers the retina on target objects--words or phrases in the case of reading. Such jumps, or saccades, are critical to vision because only the small central region of the retina, called the fovea, produces the clear image necessary for perception. Such saccades take place several times a second and are generated within a brain region known as the frontal eye field (FEF).

Why Teens Are Such Impulsive Risk-takers:

Teenagers and adults often don't see eye to eye, and new brain research is now shedding light on some of the reasons why. Although adolescence is often characterized by increased independence and a desire for knowledge and exploration, it also is a time when brain changes can result in high-risk behaviors, addiction vulnerability, and mental illness, as different parts of the brain mature at different rates.

When To Have A Child? A New Approach To The Decision:

Women seeking to balance career, social life and family life in making the decision on when to have a child may benefit from applying formal decision-making science to this complex emotional choice.

Bug-Zapper: A Dose Of Radiation May Help Knock Out Malaria:

How are physicists helping an effort to eradicate malaria, the mosquito-borne disease that kills more than one million people every year" Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) used their expertise in radiation science to help a young company create weakened, harmless versions of the malaria-causing parasite. These parasites, in turn, are being used to create a new type of vaccine that shows promise of being more effective than current malaria vaccines.