Insomnia and other sleep disorders are very common, yet are not generally well understood by doctors and other health care professionals. Now the British Association for Psychopharmacology has released up-to-the-minute guidelines in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, published by SAGE, to guide psychiatrists and physicians caring for those with sleep problems.

A team of McGill chemists have discovered that a technique known as photoacoustic infrared spectroscopy could be used to identify the composition of pigments used in art work that is decades or even centuries old. Pigments give artist's materials color, and they emit sounds when light is shone on them.

The researchers say that their study results show that suppression of melatonin due to exposure to LAN is linked to the worrying rise in the number of cancer patients over the past few years.

A chemical analysis of the bones of ancient Nubians shows that they were regularly consuming tetracycline, most likely in their beer. The finding is the strongest evidence yet that the art of making antibiotics, which officially dates to the discovery of penicillin in 1928, was common practice nearly 2,000 years ago. The Emory University study finds that it's likely this prehistoric population was using empirical evidence to develop therapeutic agents.

For severe migraine sufferers, psychological treatments build on the benefits of drug therapy, according to a new study1 by Elizabeth Seng and Dr. Kenneth Holroyd from Ohio University in the US. Their comparison of the effects of various treatment combinations for severe migraine -- drug therapy with or without behavioral management -- shows that those patients receiving the behavioral management program alongside drug therapy are significantly more confident in their ability to use behavioral skills to effectively self-manage migraines.

Biophysicists in Bochum have discovered a diode for protons: just like the electronic component determines the direction of flow of electric current, the "proton diode" ensures that protons can only pass through a cell membrane in one direction. Water molecules play an important role here as active components of the diode.

ESA's Herschel infrared space observatory has discovered that ultraviolet starlight is the key ingredient for making water in space. It is the only explanation for why a dying star is surrounded by a gigantic cloud of hot water vapor.

Patients who use cannabis for medicinal purposes pose a wide range of legal, ethical and medical dilemmas for the health care professionals looking after them according to an in-depth review just published. The study also found extreme caution about integrating cannabis derivative medications into mainstream medical use.

For inhomogeneous single-scattering participating media, we propose an image based modeling method, which includes the design of an easy-to-use participating media capture device and the use of a progressive refinement algorithm for a multi-resolution volume with a graphics processing unit (GPU). Compared with previous methods, only a few captured images of participating media from different viewpoints are required in the construction of the media with high-frequency density details. Furthermore, our method does not need to simplify the radiative transfer equation.

The Key Laboratory of Applied Superconductivity, Institute of Electrical Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, and China Research have collaborated to reveal the heat-treatment effects on the superconducting properties of Ag-doped Sr0.6K0.4Fe2As2 compounds. Because of its significant research value, the study is reported in issue 7 of Science in China: Physics, Mechanics & Astronomy.

The Department of Computer Science and Technology, Peking University, Beijing, China, has shown that a novel dynamic memory mapping model brings about additional flexibility to virtual resource management, leading to the feature-adjustable design of a virtual machine monitor. The study is reported in issue 53 of Science China Information Sciences.

Engineers at Harvard University have created a millionth-scale automobile differential to govern the flight of minuscule aerial robots that could someday be used to probe environmental hazards, forest fires, and other places too perilous for people. Their new approach is the first to passively balance the aerodynamic forces encountered by these miniature flying devices, letting their wings flap asymmetrically in response to gusts of wind, wing damage, and other real-world impediments.

Cluster has spent a decade revealing previously hidden interactions between the Sun and Earth. Its studies have uncovered secrets of aurora, solar storms, and given us insight into fundamental processes that occur across the Universe. And there is more work to do.

Virtual characters can behave according to actions carried out unconsciously by humans. Researchers at the University of Barcelona have created a system which measures human physiological parameters, such as respiration or heart rate, and introduces them into computer designed characters in real time.

A study comparing a University of Pennsylvania method for evaluating a dog's susceptibility to hip dysplasia to the traditional American method has shown that 80 percent of dogs judged to be normal by the traditional method are actually at risk for developing osteoarthritis and hip dysplasia, according to the Penn method.