Y ou are doing a breast reduction. You have chosen a vertical flap and inverted T incision. You like the vertical reduction and medial pedicle because there is a shorter incision , but you think there will be too much skin excess, so it will be better to excise it now. For some reason, every time you do the inferior pedicle the base of the pedicle becomes thin and narrow. This worries you. You ...

A locust can make a tasty morsel for a hungry predator, so being able to notice potentially dangerous looming objects and trigger the correct response could save a locust’s life. In locusts, a visual neuron called the descending contralateral movement detector (DCMD) spikes in response to looming objects and could therefore be the trigger for escape responses. Tomas Money and colleagues at Quee...

1. Director, Erik Erikson Institute for Research & Education, The Austen Riggs Center, Stockbridge, Massachusetts; Co-director of the Peaceful Schools Project, Child & Family Center, The Menninger Clinic, Topeka, Kansas; Clinical Professor of Psychiatry University of Kansas School of Medicine, Wichita, Kansas and faculty Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA. Consultant to the FBI Critical Inciden...

Seeing someone plunge into an ice-cold bath induces feelings of cold. However, it was recently demonstrated that ie ing another’s skin temperature change also induces a small congruent temperature change in the observer. This synchronization suggests topdown influences on peripheral temperature regulation mechanisms and lends supports to somatic-simulation theories of inter-subjectivity.

Communication between users in shared editors takes place in a deprived environment – distributed users find it difficult to communicate. While many solutions to the problems this causes have been suggested this paper presents a novel one. It describes one possible use of haptics as a channel for communication between users. User’s telepointers are considered as haptic avatars and interactions ...

I’ve always greatly admired the scientific ethos of Journal of Neurophysiology. Reading the Journal reminds me of what I like best about science. I like that it publishes full-length reports, which are still being cited 20 or 30 years on. I like that each paper can stand on its own, without 10 supplemental online figures. While authors will always grumble about reviews (myself included), the re...

Adult stem cells are not pampered pushovers. O'Reilly et al. report that certain stem cells take charge of their surroundings, molding their environment to control their division and differentiation. Some stem cells are cosseted like newborns. Neighboring cells cradle them in a structure called the niche. The niche not only nurtures its charges, it also dictates their behavior, determining whet...

BACKGROUND A qualitative study of maternal perceptions of home safety advice. The aim was to gain an understanding of maternal perceptions of and possible barriers to the implementation of home safety advice. METHODS Semi-structured interviews with 37 mothers with a child aged less than 5 years of age; 16 were mothers living in an area of socio-economic disadvantage (with a high rate of child...