In excavations in the City of David aimed at exposing the main road in Jerusalem from the time of the Second Temple period, the city's main drainage channel was discovered. According to the writings of Josephus Flavius, the residents of the city fled to this channel at the time of the revolt in order to hide from the Romans.

Researchers have found surprising evidence that an antidepressant (citalopram) may perform as well as a commonly prescribed antipsychotic (risperidone) in the alleviation of severe agitation and psychotic symptoms of dementia. Researchers also found that the antidepressant was associated with "significantly lower" adverse side effects.

Compared to healthy women, breast cancer survivors reported more days of fatigue and more severe fatigue symptoms. Fatigue is a common complaint in the general population and, anecdotally, common among cancer patients. Comparative fatigue studies between the two populations, however, have been marred by methodological shortcomings, such as poorly matched controls and patient populations.

Mental illness and emotional distress in patients with advanced cancer are often overlooked by oncologists but, if screened for, can be adequately managed to improve a patient's quality of life. In an article published in Cancer researchers review the published literature of psychiatric illnesses in cancer patients.

Bacteria that thrive in oxygen starved environments have been used successfully to target cancer tumours, delivering gene therapy based anti-cancer treatments. For about half of cancer sufferers our traditional treatments such as radiotherapy and chemotherapy are ineffective, so alternative techniques are being developed to target their tumours.

Cell phones should come no closer than one meter to hospital beds and equipment, according Dutch research. Scientists demonstrated that incidents of electromagnetic interference from certain cell phones occurred even at distance of three meters.

Recent findings from study of incentives, decision-making, and influenza epidemics may offer guidance on public health policy. Researchers have found that while family-based vaccination incentives fail to prevent severe epidemics, program that allows individuals three free annual vaccinations once they pay for the first may prove effective.

Ecologists have at last got to the bottom of why bears rub trees -- and it's not because they have itchy backs. Adult male grizzly bears use so-called "rub trees" as a way to communicate with each other while looking for breeding females, and that this behaviour could help reduce battles between the bears.

To think that world domination could have begun in the cheeks. That's one interpretation of a recent discovery which indicates that humans carry extra copies of the salivary amylase gene. Humans have many more copies of this gene than any of their ape relatives, the study found, and they use the copies to flood their mouths with amylase, an enzyme that digests starch. The finding bolsters the idea...

Female animals that mate with multiple partners may be doing so to ensure the optimum health of their grandchildren, according to researchers. Despite mating being a risky business for females -- not least with the threat of injury, sexually transmitted diseases and vulnerability to predators - polyandry (females taking multiple mates) is widespread in the animal kingdom.

Is the navigation system too complex? Does it distract the driver's attention from the traffic? To test electronic assistants, their developers have to build numerous prototypes -- an expensive and time-consuming business. Tests in a virtual world make prototypes unnecessary. The engineer stares intently at the display on the virtual dashboard. His task is to test the new driver assistance system...

Heading a soccer ball correctly does not cause brain damage, at least not any damage that can be traced in the spinal fluid of soccer players, according to a small study. Researchers looked for brain damage through analysis of biochemical markers in amateur soccer players.

The Marburg virus, like its fearsome cousin Ebola, belongs to the Filoviridae family. It carries the name of the German town where it was first detected in 1967, after a mysterious epidemic had hit employees of the Behring laboratory. The workers had been contaminated as they took organ samples from green monkeys imported from Uganda. Up to the end of the 20th Century, rare cases of violent...

Researchers have developed a molecular probe that sets aglow tumor cells within living animals. Their goal is to use the probe to improve the diagnosis and treatment of cancer and other diseases.

Shaking and tapping is often the only way to get the last drop of ketchup out of the bottle. But in future, even this final drop will slide out easily onto the barbecued steak -- thanks to a special coating on the packaging. We all know the problem with ketchup or mayonnaise: No matter how we shake or tap the bottle, some of the content refuses to come out. In some cases, up to 20 percent is left...

Sensors can monitor production processes, unmask tiny cracks in aircraft hulls, and determine the amount of laundry in a washing machine. In future, they will also be used in the human body and raise the alarm in the event of high pressure in the eye, bladder or brain. If the pressure in the eye is too high, nerve fibers die, resulting in visual field loss or blindness. Since increased intraocular...

Without silicon there would be no computer industry since most computer chips consist of this semiconductor material. The same is true for solar cells: They too are predominantly silicon-based. The monocrystals are cut in round slices approximately one millimeter thick, which experts call wafers. Their surfaces must be as smooth as glass; irregularities may only be a few nanometers wide, i.e. less...

Scientists have identified unique cells within the adult tendon that have stem-cell characteristics -- including the ability to proliferate and self-renew. The research team was able to isolate these cells and regenerate tendon-like tissue in the animal mode.

During the last Ice Age, the ice dammed enormous lakes in Russia. The drainage system was reversed several times and the rivers flowed southwards. A group of geologists is now investigating what took place when the ice melted and the lakes released huge volumes of fresh water into the Arctic Ocean. "The ice-dammed lakes in Russia were larger than the largest lakes we know today," according to...

By guiding an enzyme down a new evolutionary pathway, researchers have created a new form of an enzyme capable of producing a range of potential new therapeutic agents with anti-cancer and antibiotic properties. They describes a novel enzyme capable of changing the chemical properties of a variety of existing drugs and small molecules to make new agents to treat cancer and fight infection.

Future reduction of sea ice in the Arctic could result in a loss of 2/3 of the world's polar bear population within 50 years according to a series of studies just released by the U.S. Geological Survey. Polar bears depend on sea ice as a platform to hunt seals, their primary food. But sea ice is decreasing throughout their Arctic range due to climate change. Models used by the USGS team project a...

A new CDC report shows the largest one-year increase in youth suicide rate in 15 years. Suicide rates for 10-19 year-old females and 15-19 year-old males increased significantly in 2004 in the United States. An increase in the suicide rates for three gender-age groups accounts for the increase in the overall suicide rate, the report said. Rates rose for 10- to-14-year-old females, 15...

Supercomputers keep growing ever faster, racing along at the blazing speed of nearly one petaflops -- 10 to the fifteenth, or one thousand trillion calculations per second -- equivalent to around 250 thousand of today's laptops. In contrast, the experience of a computational scientist can be anything but fast -- waiting hours or days in a queue for a job to run and yield precious results needed...

When it comes to boosting antioxidant intake, recent research indicates there's little benefit from taking diet supplements. A better way, according to a report in the September issue of Mayo Clinic Health Letter, is eating a diet rich in antioxidant-containing foods. Antioxidants such as vitamins C and E, carotene, lycopene, lutein and many other substances may play a role in helping to prevent...