Combatting an addiction is far more complicated than stopping the chemical cravings—a person can associate places or other people with drug use, making the habit much harder to kick. Now a team led by neuroscientists from the University of Oxford have used light to alter mice's memories so that they no longer associate particular locations with cocaine, according to a study published this week in Nature Neuroscience. Eliminating that association might present a whole new way to treat drug addiction.
Riding crowded public transportation, or navigating large crowds at an event or concert often means getting touched by strangers. Researchers at the University of Oxford and Aalto University in Finland have turned to 1,368 people from five countries to determine how comfortable people are with being touched on various body regions based on who's doing the touching.
In the bizarre world of cryptozoology, the yeti looms large, its potential existence the stuff of legend since the days of the first Mt. Everest expeditions. Now a new effort could settle it for good, by studying DNA from hair samples stored at various institutions around the world. Maybe the samples do belong to a yeti or some type of beast unknown to science, or maybe it's as boring as a bear - a team of researchers at the University of Oxford and the Lausanne Museum of Zoology aim to find out.
