People who already believe in the benefits of "brain training" may be more likely to participate in a study that is explicitly about the benefits ... of brain training. Obviously, such self-selection will bias the results, and the placebo effect can magnify them.

Vitamin D is one of a list of nutrients thought to be valuable in preventing, or treating, a long list of conditions. But according to researchers from the University of Alberta, for most conditions linked to vitamin D the evidence is weak, if not completely non-existent.

There sure are a lot of toxicology "experts" out there on the web, and they really don't like anything that is sweet (except maybe when they sell it). We recently wrote about sucralose (Splenda), which is trashed by these "Internut" know-nothings despite the fact that its safety profile is about as good as you'll ever see. But, these I-nuts are even more verbal about aspartame -- and the more verbal they are, the more they get it wrong.

Emissions from pizza ovens may be a big problem.

Are you more clever than your fridge? Yes you are -- right now. But if you build a network of algorithms that can listen to feedback, it can update its network to get the right answers. This is deep learning -- and it’s learning from you.

For those with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, the unfamiliar can be paralyzing and they need more ritual and routine to offset the chaos of the outside world. A new study examined how endocannabinoids -- natural messengers in the body chemically similar to the active compound in marijuana, and known to generally reduce the activity of neurons -- play a role in how the brain controls this fundamental process.

1. An unknown environmental group got a gaggle of activists together and tried to get us banned in Google as a spam site. Google is terrific about responding, of course, but they are also good about checking on those things to see, so we were back up and running soon enough.
They also paid someone to do a Distributed Denial of Service (DD0S) attack, which knocked off our site for a little bit. We are still tracking the location of the attack but our server company kicked into gear to stop them.

Twice a year, when I visit my in-laws in Poland, I get to dabble in the soft science of linguistics in my futile attempt to learn the Polish language. Few people outside my immediate family can understand me because what I think of as “speaking” others perceive as caveman-like grunts with a Yankee accent.

Injuries are part and parcel of soccer. Sure enough, they do not seem to be decreasing, even though most top-level teams have embedded sports medicine into their operations. But if teams applied the same approach to the act of kicking a ball, as it does to overall skill development, rates of injury could decline significantly.

As people tend to get older, decisions about topics such as health and retirement can be a bit more challenging. The difficult decisions we make later in life are often important and can impact our lives substantially, meaning there may be fewer opportunities to recover from any bad decisions we make.