The hormone of darkness: melatonin could hurt memory formation at night

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In a study with zebrafish (Danio rerio) Gregg W. Roman assistant professor in the Department of Biology and Biochemistry at the University of Houston has found that melatonin directly inhibits memory formation at night. He describes his teams finding ...
In a study with zebrafish (Danio rerio), Gregg W. Roman, assistant professor in the Department of Biology and Biochemistry at the University of Houston, has found that melatonin directly inhibits memory formation at night. He describes his team's findings in a paper titled "Melatonin Suppresses Nighttime Memory Formation in Zebrafish," appearing in Science, the world's leading journal of original scientific research. Credit: Thomas Shea

What do you do when a naturally occurring hormone in your body turns against you? What do you do when that same hormone – melatonin – is a popular supplement you take to help you sleep? A University of Houston professor and his team of researchers may have some answers.


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Fossil feathers preserve evidence of color

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The traces of organic material found in fossil feathers are remnants of pigments that once gave birds their color, according to Yale scientists whose paper in Biology Letters opens up the potential ...

Do we think that machines can think?

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When our PC goes on strike again we tend to curse it as if it was a human. The question of why and under what circumstances we attribute human-like properties to machines and how such processes manifest on a cortical level ...

Superfast muscles in songbirds

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Certain songbirds can contract their vocal muscles 100 times faster than humans can blink an eye – placing the birds with a handful of animals that have evolved superfast muscles, University of Utah researchers ...

Art of deception: Crystal skulls in British, US museums were fakes

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How about this for the next instalment of the Indy franchise: "Indiana Jones and the Dodgy Antiques Dealer"?

Milwaukee museum unveils woolly mammoth skeleton

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(AP) -- A 14,500-year-old woolly mammoth skeleton dug up in 1994 has been unveiled at the Milwaukee Public Museum, giving locals a glimpse of perhaps the most intact specimen discovered in North America.
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