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For years, do-it-yourself health care meant looking up your symptoms on WebMD. But smart phones are extending our control, with apps that let people plan and track workouts, monitor important health indicators, and even locate nearby clinical trials. Apple's App Store alone offers thousands of mobile health apps

By Edward McAllister (Reuters) - U.S. regulators said on Thursday they will perform water tests at about 60 homes in the small town of Dimock in Pennsylvania where residents say natural gas drilling has polluted wells.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto/Yuri_Arcurs Sex might seem like a risky occupation for the more than 27 million Americans who have been diagnosed with heart disease.

Seaweed may well be an ideal plant to turn into biofuel. It grows in much of the two thirds of the planet that is underwater, so it wouldn't crowd out food crops the way corn for ethanol does. Because it draws its own nutrients and water from the sea, it requires no fertilizer or irrigation.

By Meredith Wadman of Nature magazine In December 2010, the US Congress passed the National Alzheimer's Project Act. [More]

Male great bowerbird. Image by algaedoc via Flickr Male bowerbirds are virtuoso architects

One reason Americans have such a huge weight problem? Our dishware. When faced with a bigger plate, people are inclined to heap on--and consume--more food

By Rebecca Hill of Nature magazine A decade ago, hot on the heels of whole-genome sequencing, the idea of three-dimensional genome mapping was developed. [More]

By Eric Hand of Nature Magazine On 4 January, John Grunsfeld, the fix-it-man for the Hubble Space Telescope, became the head of NASA's Science Mission Directorate. [More]

Key concepts [More]

The elderly man lived by himself in a low-income apartment near Cincinnati.

By Meredith Wadman of Nature magazine US researchers are concerned that revised guidelines that recommend a minimum size for breeding lab rodents' cages will substantially increase the cost of animal work. The eighth edition of the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, published last year by the US National Academies in Washington DC, is the first to recommend minimum cage sizes for female rats and mice and their litters. [More]

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True to their name, boa constrictors squeeze the life out of their prey. But how does a boa know it's snuffed out a rat? The snake listens for a heartbeat.

Dung beetles dance to check their navigation.