Fear of the dark is a common complaint in children and is often attributed to attention seeking behaviour. Yet researchers in this week’s BMJ suggest that it may be due to night blindness – a diagnosis which can be easily missed.

They describe two children with an inherited form of stationary night blindness. Both were very frightened of the dark, had a history of bumping into things at night, and insisted that curtains were drawn much earlier than others would choose. One child had fear of

Authors of a fast-track study in this week’s issue of THE LANCET propose an alternative to antibiotics to treat infection associated with the use of chemotherapy for patients with blood cancer.

The toxic effects of chemotherapy cause organisms in the gut to migrate to the bloodstream, frequently resulting in bacterial infection. Michael Ellis and colleagues from the United Arab Emirates investigated whether interleukin 11 (IL-11)-an agent involved in the immune response and thought to prote

Findings Show The Force of Blood Flow Has Anti-Inflammatory Effect

Scientists have found a new way in which exercise may protect against heart disease. Increased blood flow can mimic the powerful anti-inflammatory actions of certain glucocorticoid steroid drugs, according to researchers at the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute for Medicine and Engineering. The researchers discovered that an increase in shear stress – the drag force exerted by blood flowing over endothelial

Analysis of Martian volcanoes will help determine when Hesperian epoch began

Research by a University at Buffalo planetary geologist suggests that generally accepted estimates about the geologic age of surfaces on Mars — which influence theories about its history and whether or not it once sustained life — could be way off.

Funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the research eventually could overturn principles about the relative ages of different are

Neural circuits that control eye movements play multiple roles in visual attention

With so many visual stimuli bombarding our eyes — cars whizzing by, leaves fluttering — how can we focus attention on a single spot — a word on a page or a fleeting facial expression? How do we filter so purely that the competing stimuli never even register in our awareness?

A pair of Princeton scientists have found that it has a lot to do with the brain circuits that control eye movements.

In an organic chemistry lab located in the Science II building on the campus of Binghamton University, Scott Handy is busy whipping up promising new substances modeled after natural compounds found in sea sponges and tobacco plants. Some of the synthetic compounds could help in the fight against cancer and AIDS. Others could provide a safer, more effective, and more affordable alternative to the traditional solvents organic chemists use to catalyze reactions and synthesize compounds, one molecule at