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.

A recent WiFi - iPhone problem was resolved recently at Duke University. At first it was feared that the iPhone was causing a problem with the WiFi network in the campus by barraging the servers with thousands of media control access requests a second, effectively knocking out the wireless access points. As many as 20 to 30 WAPs at a time was knocked out because of the MAC requests.

Recently though, the problem was resolved and the Campus' wireless network provider, Cisco, fixed a glitch in their systems. Apparently, the problem lay within the network and not entirely on the iPhone. A statement released by Cisco stated that the wireless network at Duke University "experience[s] some minor and temporary disruptions in service" given a "particular set of conditions." The specifics of what this set of conditions entail was not enclosed with the statement.

Van Baker, research Vice President at Garter in California, believes that the problem was something unique to the system at Duke University. Other universities also use the the Cisco system using the same kind of infrastructure and they did not experience any problems similar to what Duke experienced. Baker surmises that the Duke system has an encryption system not incorporated in the iPhone and that caused the glitch in the system which caused the WAPs to get knocked out.

Baker further explains his theory by explaining that "Cisco's LEAP (Lightweight Extensible Authentication Protocol) is an enterprise deployment not seen in the consumer market at all. The iPhone doesn't have a lot of the features you'd normally expect to see in an enterprise class phone."

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.

You high school guys might want to go easy on your iPods for a bit. Reportedly high school institutions across the U.S. are banning the music device to keep students from cheating in exams.

Students have become increasingly creative with ways to cheat with the growing technology at their disposal, hence the teachers are looking at cutting the evil from the roots, so to speak. And this is by way of imposing an outright ban on digital media players. Mountain View High School, for example, has already implemented the ban, realizing that some students had downloaded formulas and other material to their players.

Says National Association of Secondary School Principals spokeswoman, Shana Kemp of the ban, "I think it is becoming a national trend. We hope that each district will have a policy in place for technology - it keeps a lot of the problems down."

On the other end of the spectrum, meanwhile, there are some institutions like Duke University in North Carolina, which have chosen to utilize the iPod to enhance the educational experience of the students. So far, with the experiment going on for three years now, the move seems to be working for them. Instances of cheating have declined over the past ten years, and they say it's "largely because the community expects its students to have academic integrity," explains Tom Dodd, executive director of Duke's  The Center of Academic Integrity.

Technology can both be a boon and a bane. It's just a matter of determining for yourself if you'll use it for the good or not.

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.

Since Apple allowed universities to post lectures and other educational items on iTunes, universities have grabbed the opportunity to spread the knowledge. George Washington University, Duke University, North Carolina Central University, and Ohlone College are just some of the universities that have joined iTunes U.

With that, a bill was put forward on Michigan recently that includes a proposal to give out US$ 38 million in iPods or other mp3 players as instructional tools for every student in the state. But even if the Michigan legislators mean well, they were still questioned by school representatives. According to Don Wotruba, spokesman for the Michigan Association of School Boards:

My members are telling me they have much more pressing things they’re worried about, like whether they’re going to be able to make payroll in May.