Granted, lack of sleep will prove detrimental to anyone, but a recent study conducted by Edward Suarez at Duke University Medical Center seems to suggest that women get the short end of the stick when it comes to getting inadequate rest. More details follow after the jump.

So you think you're smarter than a monkey? A new study from PLoS Biology suggests that monkeys can do math just as well as humans. One study showed that rhesus macaque monkeys performed nearly as well as college students with quick mental math while a study from Duke University found that chimpanzees actually did better than humans at a memory game. More at the full article.

Scientists and doctors alike are continuously looking for ways that'll improve the lives of paralyzed people.

In Neurosience 2007, a team at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina put electrodes in the brains of two Rheses Macaques, more commonly known as Old World Monkeys, and analyzed the electrical signals that drive their legs. The full story after the jump!

We have long wondered what the appendix is there for. We may have reached the end of the debate as a group of immunologists and surgeons from the Duke University Medical School think they've found the appendix' function.

Some thought that worm-like tube (located just where the the large and small intestine meet) had something to do with lymphoid cells while others thought that it became useless through evolution and has no function at all - making the appendix almost synonymous with vestigial. Vestigial organs are those that don't seem to have a function, like the tonsils for example, though many vestigial organs have been struck off the list as we find out that they *do* have functions.

The study from the Duke University Medical School produced a theory: the appendix "acts as a good safe house for bacteria." According to surgery professor and study co-author Bill Parker, the appendix' location in the digestive system supports the theory and it actually acts as a factory for good bacteria.

Imagine this, you get cholera or amoebic dysentery, all the useful bacteria dies off as a result. Then what? You need to get some good bacteria back. In modern society, you can pick those up from other people but imagine what it would have been like in the past when the entire region gets infected and the population wasn't so dense? According to the study, that's when the appendix kicks in; it "reboots" the digestive system's good germs.

Inflamed appendices should still be removed, according to Parker, since they can turn deadly once they pop. Makes one wonder though, are there any other differences between those who had their appendix removed and those who still have theirs? Because if there are any more, this writer's in trouble.

Soon, Harry Potter may not be the only one walking around with an invisibility cloak. Scientists from Zhejiang University and MIT are looking into the physics behind invisibility cloaks and seeing if such a theory can be made into reality.

While still in the early stages of development, the group has demonstrated how electromagnetic waves can interact with invisibility cloaks made out of metamaterials. Much in the same way that water from a creeks flows around rock, the metamaterials, made from a matrix of tiny metal wires and loops that control electromagnetic waves, can create an area of space where no electromagnetic waves appear.

Last year, a similar study was already conducted by researchers from Duke University. The experiment was able to hide an object from electromagnetic microwaves from only two dimensions. So, the scientists from Zhejiang took the study further and went about seeing if a perfect invisibility field was possible.

So far, studies have shown that a spherical-shaped cloak had the best results in creating a cloak that exhibits a zero scattering cross section of an object to be concealed.

Honsheng Chen, one of the scientists explains in detail about the theory behind it:

The cloak is both anisotropic and inhomogeneous: all of the components in the permittivity and permeability tensor are functions of the radius, which implies that the perfect invisibility cloak is very difficult to design. If we introduce a specific type of loss both in a spherical cloak and a cylindrical cloak, only the spherical cloak exhibits a zero backscattering, which indicates only the spherical cloak can still be rendered invisible with a monostatic (transmitter and receiver in the same location) detection. This is because the impedance of the spherical cloak is still matched to the free space in this particular loss case.

Because imperfect cloaks seem easier to recreate, there have been more realistic applications for the theory today compared to perfect cloaks. Military uses such as cloaking planes and weapons to radar were just some of the examples sited. It may also be possible to look through walls as if they were windows someday.

Trust us, this is scientific, and it has a lot to do with your health and your well-being. If you have relatives who watch Oprah, you probably catch the good Doctor Oz often. Anyhow, here's what Doctor Oz had to say when asked how many times a year one should have sex. it was revealed that one should basically have 200 or more orgasms a year.

Apparently, there was this study done at Duke University that looked at what happened to folks who were having a lot of intercourse over time, and Doctor Oz claims that the there was indeed a correlation between the number of orgasms and one's physiologic age.

Doctor Oz says: "If you have more than 200 orgasms a year, you can reduce your physiologic age by six years."

We assume, of course, that self-pleasure doesn't count, as that only exercises your wrist, but what do we know? Let's see what else Doc Oz had to say:

But in addition, having sex with someone that you care for deeply is one of the ways we achieve that Zen experience that we all crave as human beings... It's really a spiritual event for folks when they're with someone they love and they can consummate it with sexual activity... seems to offer some survival benefit.

Oh, okay, so you do need a partner (not one you paid for, mind you). Oh well.

Just off the coast of Costa Rica, some 8,500 feet below the water surface, a "new undersea mineral chimney" was discovered by an expedition led by U.S. researchers. Aboard the WHOI research vessel Atlantis, the team found that this vent emitted hot, iron-darkened water that attracted "unusual" marine life.

The Medusa hydrothermal vent, as the expedition members called it, had bell-shaped pink jellyfish swimming near it. The team described the jellyfish as "really unusual."

Karen Von Damm, an earth sciences professor from the University of New Hampshire, said, "The ones we found may be of a different species because nobody has seen types of this color before." The species has yet to be expertly identified.

The discovery, however, was likened to that of "the serpent-haired Medusa of Greek myth" because of the image that the numerous spiky tubeworm casings around the vent gave. The expedition is a collection of experts from Duke University and the Universities of New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida.

There are no pictures as of this report to illustrate the discovery or the supposedly new species of jellyfish. The expedition is currently being funded by the National Science Foundation.

Thanks to the zebra fish, researchers may now actually reveal the secrets of the process of heart regeneration. Why them fish? Because they can regenerate their hearts. Smart, eh? According to Kenneth Poss and his colleagues over at Duke University, the Danio rerio (zebra fish) heal their hearts (oh, but that just sounds so cheesy...) through two synchronized steps.

What happens is, within five days, after having removed about 20 percent of an adult zebra fish heart ventricle, there appears undifferentiated progenitor cells lining the injured area, which will then turn into cardiac muscle cells.  These new muscle cells will then grow and divide, thus constructing a new heart muscle. While this is happening, meanwhile, a cell layer surrounding the heart and influencing the embryonic heart development - the developmental genes in the epicardium - are switched on, thereby activating the epicardial cells. 

Most of the cells will produce a new layer to protect the regenerating heart muscle, and to "bandage" the wound. Others, says Poss, will also create blood vessels for the growing muscle, "fulfilling the same role as they do when the embryonic heart develops."

A chemical produced by the heart muscles operates as a growth factor signal so that the two processes will converge and mend the heart. It activates the receptors on the surface of the epicardial cells as a signal that it needs to form a new heart lining. However, if a miscommunication ensues between the two cell types (ie. blockage), the regeneration cannot be completed and the heart scars.

Poss is putting up his hopes that colleagues will now "take a closer look at the epicardium in injured mammalian hearts and to potentially look at whether epicardial cells can be used therapeutically." The study appears in Cell's November 3rd issue.

This is some freaky Hollywood-sc-fi stuff right here. Remember that movie with Nicolas Cage and John Travolta, where they swapped faces (hence, the film's aptly called Face/Off)? Well, think that...in real life! Yup, scientists now are leaning towards face transplantation as the leading option for severe face injuries.

Says Dr. Scott Levin, Duke University Medical School's chief fo the plastic and reconstructive surgery division, "The next generation of reconstructive surgery will be transplantation, there' s no question in my mind about that." In fact, just last year, he published in Plastic Surgery 2006 an abstract on a new method for - get this - total face harvesting from a cadaver. Uh...okay...

But although these folks may be geared to perform the first full-face transplant, of course, they'd still want to have another option, something much more sophisticated than "recycling" faces off cadavers and putting them on breathing human people. One such option would be learning to regenerate the skin on the face. To do this, they would inevitably need to harvest and learn all about the potentials from stem cell research.

Personally, I think that would be a much better option. Less freaky, too. The trouble with a full-face transplant is that, apart from having that gory feeling that you're walking about wearing some dead guy's face, the patient would have to be put on immunosuppressive drugs for life. Hmm...you've got a dead guy's face on, and you're perpetually drugged. That's a green light for a new zombie you! Literally.

Anyhow, the president of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, Dr. Roxanne Guy, also believes that stem cells and regenerative medicine are the way to go in the future for treating facial injuries. But for now, attaining that sci-fi goal is still beyond the timeline. "How long will it be before we can do these thing successfully? I don't know the answer, but we're definitely on the threshold of a breakthrough in that sort of science."

No, really. You won't see it to believe it. The UK Times recently reported that, using the principles developed by a British scientist, scientists across the pond in Duke University were able to create what is said to be the world's first "invisibility cloak".

Students of Hogwarts, Klingons and Romulans, members of MI-6 and FOXHOUND, whoever constructed Leasath's Glepnir sky fortress, acolytes of Nod, and teenagers everywhere who want to sneak out for some midnight fun, you may want to pay attention.

The "invisibility cloak" is made of "metamaterials" (artificial composites) and copper, and is designed to "warp", as they call it, electromagnetic radiation around it. Light waves are a form of electromagnetic radiation, by the way. Normally, an opaque object directly between a light source and your eye will block the light rays from reaching your eye.

Wrap this developed "invisibility cloak" around it, however, and it will warp the light rays from behind to the other side, where they will travel to your eye. And you will see the light source - but not the object and its "cloak". Exactly the same principles used by the finest Klingon and Romulan cloaking devices in their respective starfleets.

The US experiments have actually been conducted using microwave radiation and microwave sensors instead of light and human eyes, but the principles remain the same - and have been proven by said experiments. The British scientist who started it all - Imperial College of London's Sir John Pendry, expects that the world can see - or won't see - practical applications of this tech in five years in both military and civilian fields of application.

No, Snake, they haven't developed an infinite ammo bandana yet.