There are three key sections of our ear – the outer ear, the middle ear and the inner ear. Your question relates to the middle ear and the area around the ear drum.

Today Americans live in a world that thrives on being busy, productive and over scheduled. Further, they have developed the technological means to be constantly connected to others and to vast options for information and entertainment through social media. For many, smartphones demand their attention day and night with constant notifications.

Some media reports say that eating at night makes you gain weight, others say that it has no effect on body weight. So who is right?

New research shows that recent interactions with their environment can guide where people look.

Many of us don’t get enough sleep on a regular basis. It might be due to a sleep disorder, busy social life, new baby, long working hours, shift work or just staying up too late binge-watching Netflix. But not getting enough quality sleep can have significant implications for health.

Custom pizzas, coral reefs, space fabric — all are possible thanks to 3D printing. Next, the technique could give some people the gift of sight.

The amount of sleep adults need has once again come under the spotlight, with a recent Wall Street Journal article suggesting seven hours sleep is better than eight hours and the American Academy of Sleep Medicine drawing up guidelines surrounding sleep need.

Most animals have brains in proportion to their body size – species with larger bodies often have larger brains. But the human brain is almost six times bigger than expected for our bodies. This is puzzling, as the brain is very costly – burning 20% of the body’s energy while accounting for only 4% of its mass.

New research links the BMI of one spouse and the other spouse’s risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

How concerned should people be about the psychological effects of screen time? Balancing technology use with other aspects of daily life seems reasonable, but there is a lot of conflicting advice about where that balance should be. Much of the discussion is framed around fighting “addiction” to technology. But to me, that resembles a moral panic, giving voice to scary claims based on weak data.

Imagine the director of a big company announcing an important decision and justifying it with it being based on a gut feeling. This would be met with disbelief – surely important decisions have to be thought over carefully, deliberately and rationally?

Understanding the biology behind consciousness (or self-awareness) is considered by some to be the final frontier of science. And over the last decade, a fledgling community of “consciousness scientists” have gathered some interesting information about the differences between conscious and unconscious brain activity.

Recommendations usually include cutting out chocolate, other junk foods and dairy products. But is there evidence to actually support this?

Cancer is the leading cause of death in the world. It occurs when mutations in our cells lead to unchecked growth. But what if we could engineer biological cells to fight back? 

We all love delicious foods, even if we know they may not be good for us. Foods high in energy – specifically sweet, salty and fatty foods – tend to taste the best.

Making a drug is like trying to pick a lock at the molecular level. There are two ways in which you can proceed. You can try thousands of different keys at random, hopefully finding one that fits. The pharmaceutical industry does this all the time – sometimes screening hundreds of thousands of compounds to see if they interact with a certain enzyme or protein. But unfortunately it’s not always efficient – there are more drug molecule shapes than seconds have passed since the beginning of the universe.

With springtime comes the desire to shed those few extra pounds, in preparation to don swimsuits and head to the pool. This year, new obesity research is making it easier to find a pathway that is right for us.