Immunology

Allergy is the price we pay for our immunity to parasites

New findings, published in PLOS Computational Biology, help demonstrate the evolutionary basis for allergy. Molecular similarities in food and environmental proteins that cause allergy (such as pollen), and multicellular ...

Psychology & Psychiatry

Study finds night owls more likely to be psychopaths

(Medical Xpress)—People who stay up late at night are more likely to display anti-social personality traits such as narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathic tendencies, according to a study published by a University ...

Genetics

Fruit flies with Restless Legs Syndrome point to a genetic cause

When flies are made to lose a gene with links to Restless Legs Syndrome (RLS), they suffer the same sleep disturbances and restlessness that human patients do. The findings reported online on May 31 in Current Biology strongly ...

Neuroscience

Why has synesthesia survived evolution?

In the 19th century, Francis Galton noted that certain people who were otherwise normal "saw" every number or letter tinged with a particular color, even though it was written in black ink. For the past two decades researchers ...