Patients with Alzheimer's disease have been given fresh hope as scientists discover that off the shelf vitamin B supplement halts memory loss.

Researchers have discovered that high doses of Vitamin B3, which costs as little as £4 over the counter, could have a dramatic effect on the onslaught of the progressive disease.

The breakthrough by US scientists could mean a cheap and easily obtainable treatment for the 417,000 or so sufferers in the UK.

The Western New Mexico Correctional Facility sits in high-desert country about seventy miles west of Albuquerque. Grants, a former uranium boomtown that depends heavily on prison work, is a few miles down the road. There's a glassed-in room at the top of the prison tower, with louvred windows and, on the ceiling, a big crank that operates a searchlight. In a box on the floor are some tear-gas shells that can be fired down into the yard should there be a riot. Below is the prison complex - a series of low six-sided buildings, divided by high hurricane fences topped with razor wire that glitters fiercely in the desert sun. To the east is the snow-covered peak of Mt. Taylor, the highest in the region; to the west, the Zuni Mountains are visible in the blue distance.

One bright morning last April, Dr. Kent Kiehl strode across the parking lot to the entrance, saying, "I guarantee that by the time we reach the gate the entire inmate population will know I'm here." Kiehl - the Doc, as the inmates call him - was dressed in a blue blazer and a yellow tie. He is tall, broad-shouldered, and barrel-chested, with neat brown hair and small ears; he looks more like a college football player, which was his first ambition, than like a cognitive neuroscientist. But when he speaks, in an unexpectedly high-pitched voice, he becomes that know-it-all kid in school who intimidated you with his combination of superior knowledge and bluster.

At thirty-eight, Kiehl is one of the world's leading younger investigators in psychopathy, the condition of moral emptiness that affects between fifteen to twenty-five per cent of the North American prison population, and is believed by some psychologists to exist in one per cent of the general adult male population. (Female psychopaths are thought to be much rarer.) Psychopaths don't exhibit the manias, hysterias, and neuroses that are present in other types of mental illness. Their main defect, what psychologists call "severe emotional detachment" - a total lack of empathy and remorse - is concealed, and harder to describe than the symptoms of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. This absence of easily readable signs has led to debate among mental-health practitioners about what qualifies as psychopathy and how to diagnose it. Psychopathy isn't identified as a disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the American Psychiatric Association's canon; instead, a more general term, "antisocial personality disorder," known as A.P.D., covers the condition.

Probiotics could be used to protect critically ill patients from developing pneumonia, according to scientists.

The friendly bacteria can block the colonisation by dangerous bugs of the airways of ventilated patients, the Swedish study concluded.

The probiotic solution performed just as well as normal antiseptics used to keep pneumonia-causing bacteria at bay, the journal Critical Care reported.

In an election where accusations and acrimony were flung back and forth for months, a wave of calm and civility washed over millions of Americans who lined up to vote Tuesday.

"People were really overwhelmed in an amazed sort of way," said Justin Sheets, a CNN iReport contributor who arrived at 5:45 a.m. to find 200 people in line at his polling station in Richmond, Virginia.

"There was a light-hearted crowd despite weather conditions, and no one was complaining. Everyone was excited to see the turnout. There's a lot of collective energy that goes on."

Given the ubiquity of narcissistic behavior in society (1, 2) and clinical practice, it is striking that so little clinically focused research has been conducted on narcissistic traits and narcissistic personality disorder. Narcissistic personality disorder first appeared in DSM in the third edition. Its inclusion was stimulated in large part by contributions of psychoanalysts such as Kernberg, who continued in the tradition of a conflict-based ego psychology and object relations approach, and Kohut, who opted for a deficit-based theory of personality development postulating that narcissistic pathology resulted from the child's repeated experiences of parental empathic failure. The unique challenges of treating these patients received considerable attention, which led to an acceptance that expressive or insight-oriented treatment could be effective for many patients with narcissistic personality disorder previously thought untreatable.

Scientists have decoded the complete DNA of a cancer patient and traced her disease to its genetic roots.

The Washington University team identified 10 gene mutations which appeared key to the development of the woman's acute myeloid leukaemia.

Just two of these had been linked to the disease before.

The sequencing technique, described in the journal Nature, could be applied to other cancers and aid the design of targeted drugs.

The Supreme Court may rule that pharmaceutical companies cannot be sued for dangerous or even deadly side effects from their drugs if those side effects arise from an FDA-approved use.

Under a legal argument known as "pre-emption," the FDA's approval of a drug absolves companies of any responsibility if that drug later turns out to be dangerous, even if information was concealed from the FDA during the approval process. While courts have rejected this argument for decades, the winds appear to be shifting.

In February,the Supreme Court ruled that makers of medical devices were indeed immune from state lawsuits if their devices had received FDA approval. But that decision hinged on the specific wording of the law that gives the FDA authority over medical devices, and the laws relating to drug regulation are not worded the same way.

Cosmetics containing tiny "nano" particles are being used widely despite unresolved issues surrounding their safety, a consumer watchdog warns. Many skin care products, including sunscreens and wrinkle creams, contain this technology to make them easier to apply and invisible on the skin.

But experts are concerned about their possible long-term effects on the body, Which? reports. Which? wants more safety checks and tighter regulation of their use. It says, at the moment, consumers cannot tell which products use nanomaterials as many fail to mention it.

Nearly 4,000 new cases of mental health disorders were diagnosed among armed services personnel last year, according to figures published yesterday.
Statistics released by the Ministry of Defence showed 3,917 mental disorders.

Of these, 1,879 served in Afghanistan and Iraq.

A breakdown of the statistics showed a significantly higher rate of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among those personnel who had deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Despite their huge popularity among young and adult players, video games continue to remain a controversial aspect in people's lives. One element researchers are most interested in when it comes to video games is the impact they have on children, namely how increasingly aggressive they become as they experience violent content.

A recent study by Iowa State University Researchers revealed that violent video games affect children no matter the culture. In order to prove that, they conducted a study on the effects of violent video games on the level of aggression in children from the United States and Japan over a 3 to 6 month period. The results have been published in detail in the November issue of Pediatrics.