When people feel powerful they become more optimistic and less accurate in predicting the completion time of forthcoming tasks. New research examined for the first time the planning behavior of powerful people and found that power drastically reduced the accuracy of forecasts with error rates soaring up to 70%.

Researchers have begun a sea search operation to locate the deep-sea wreck site of Air France Flight 447 and to retrieve the flight recorders from the Airbus A 330.

New research has identified how specific proteins on the surface of cells, known as class A scavenger receptors, bind to double-stranded RNA and bring it into the cell, jumpstarting the immune response to a virus.

Scientists are advancing the state-of-the-art in live cell fluorescent imaging by developing a new class of fluorescent probes that span the spectrum -- from violet to the near-infrared. The new technology, called fluoromodules, can be used to monitor biological activities of individual proteins in living cells in real time.

A person's own fat cells may be the source of matrix material to grow new cells and, ultimately, new tissue for humans without risk of rejection.

Two people with compromised immune systems who became ill with 2009 H1N1 influenza developed drug-resistant strains of virus after less than two weeks on therapy, report doctors.

Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) therapies are gaining more currency the world over and in particular CAM therapies are a popular option when treating children with cancer.

A study conducted on 3,500 children found that up to 91 percent of the participating children had, at some point or other during their treatment of cancer used some form of CAM therapy.

It is not clear whether the CAM therapies formed part of the treatment; as in whether they were using them as an adjunct to mainstream therapy, or as the principle/only form of cancer treatment. But it was clear from the study that a substantial proportion of the pediatric cancer patients were using some form of cancer therapy.

The reason people opt for CAM options is that they are perceived as safe and natural, causing no harmful side effects. While some CAM therapies are excellent for combating cancer and form a valuable form of combat against the cancer, others have to be used with caution particularly when used in combination with mainstream cancer medications.

The efficacy of some cancer medications can be lessened by excessive vitamin C, Green tea compounds and St John’s wort.

Whether CAM therapies can be used for cancer or not is certainly a subject that should be discussed with one’s doctor.

Source: Cancer Health

A new study has found that gesturing at 18 months (but not early speech) predicted which children with pre- or perinatal brain lesions had vocabulary delays a year later. The results suggest that gesture may be a tool for diagnosing persistent language delay in such children. This research is important because about 1 in 4,000 infants has this type of brain injury, and intervention early in development may be critical to successful remediation of language delay.

The genes that are most beneficial to males are the most disadvantageous for females, and vice versa. However, this genetic conflict between the sexes is important in maintaining genetic variation within a species, researchers have shown in a study on fruit-flies.

Most parts of the fruit fly brain, as well as the human brain, are devoid of neural stem cells, which means that once a nerve cell dies, it can't be replaced. A new study in fruit flies shows one way to keep stem cells from dying as the brain matures. Whereas stem cells blocked from apoptosis persist, they suffer insulin withdrawal; revving up the insulin system gives healthy stem cells and generates normal-looking neurons.