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With so many other competing voices, having a conversation on a bustling subway or at a crowded cocktail party takes a great deal of concentration. New research suggests that the familiar voice of a spouse stands out against other voices, helping to sharpen auditory perception and making it easier to focus on one voice at a time.

"Familiar voices appear to influence the way an auditory 'scene' is perceptually organized," explains lead researcher Ingrid Johnsrude of Queen's University, Canada.

A malaria control method that targets mosquito larvae and pupae as they mature in standing water could be an important supplementary measure in the fight against the disease, according to a new report.

New evidence has emerged which supports the long-debated theory that life on Earth may have started on Mars, said Professor Steven Benner at the annual Goldschmidt conference that an oxidized mineral form of the element molybdenum, which may have been crucial to the origin of life, could only have been available on the surface of Mars and not on Earth. "In addition", said Benner "recent studies show that these conditions, suitable for the origin of life, may still exist on Mars."

As expected, 50 percent of the audience thought he was out of his mind.

Fast-food marketing aimed at children emphasizes giveaways and movie tie-ins much more frequently than ads targeted at adults, according to research published August 28 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by James Sargent and colleagues from the Geisel School of Medicine, Dartmouth.

Previously unknown archeological sites in forest islands reveal human presence in the western Amazon as early as 10,000 years ago, according to research published August 28 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Umberto Lombardo from the University of Bern, Switzerland and colleagues from other institutions.

Scientists at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed a new oxygen "sponge" that can easily absorb or shed oxygen atoms at low temperatures. Materials with these novel characteristics would be useful in devices such as rechargeable batteries, sensors, gas converters and fuel cells.

Materials containing atoms that can switch back and forth between multiple oxidation states are technologically important but very rare in nature, says ORNL's Ho Nyung Lee, who led the international research team that published its findings in Nature Materials.

This news release is available in French.

Drinking alcohol before first pregnancy is associated with an increased risk of benign breast disease (BBD) and breast cancer, independent of drinking after first pregnancy, according to a new study published August 28 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Here's a sobering fact for millions of young women heading back to school: The more alcohol they drink before motherhood, the greater their risk of future breast cancer.

That's according to new research from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis that, for the first time, links increased breast cancer risk to drinking between early adolescence and first full-term pregnancy. Previous studies have looked at breast cancer risk and alcohol consumption later in life or at the effect of adolescent drinking on noncancerous breast disease.

An international team of researchers coordinated by ornithologist Bret Whitney of the LSU Museum of Natural Science, or LSUMNS, recently published 15 species of birds previously unknown to science. The formal description of these birds has been printed in a special volume of the "Handbook of the Birds of the World" series. Not since 1871 have so many new species of birds been introduced under a single cover, and all 15 discoveries involve a current or former LSU researcher or student.

When a beating heart slips into an irregular, life-threatening rhythm, the treatment is well known: deliver a burst of electric current from a pacemaker or defibrillator. But because the electricity itself can cause pain, tissue damage and other serious side-effects, a Johns Hopkins-led research team wants to replace these jolts with a kinder, gentler remedy: light.

STANFORD, Calif. - Pulmonary hypertension, a deadly form of high blood pressure that develops in the lungs, may be caused by an inflammation-producing molecular pathway that damages the inner lining of blood vessels, according to a new study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass-- It's a long, expensive, risky road to turn a scientific breakthrough into a treatment that can help patients. Fewer organizations are trying to tackle the challenges alone, says a new paper from MIT researchers published August 28 in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Researchers have created a model that may explain the complexities of the origins of life. Their work, which appears in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, offers new insights into how RNA signaling likely developed into the modern "genetic code."

"Our model shows that today's genetic code probably resulted from a combination of selective forces and random chance," explained Justin Jee, a doctoral student at NYU School of Medicine and the paper's lead author.

Researchers at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, both part of the National Institutes of Health, have identified the cells in two distinct areas of the body that are simultaneously targeted for damage by anthrax toxins, eventually causing illness and sometimes death. Their findings, which appeared online today in Nature, are based on testing in mice. However, the results may contribute to the development of anthrax treatments for humans, the researchers say.