Scientists might be a bit sniffy about this latest research, but a nasal spray containing a hormone can help bring happiness to warring couples living together.

A study has shown that breathing in a compound containing oxytocin makes women calmer and friendlier and men more sensitive and positive during arguments.

Dubbed the 'cuddle drug', oxytocin is naturally made in the body and is involved in sex, sexual attraction, trust and confidence.

It is released into the blood during labour - triggering the production of breast milk - and floods the brain during breastfeeding, helping mother and baby bond.

The research, reported in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, looked at how the hormone affects stress and the autonomic nervous system during disagreements between couples.

When there is an argument, there is an increased heart rate and higher blood pressure.

Forty-seven couples, aged 20 to 50, were involved in the experiment at Zurich University. They were either married or had cohabited for at least a year.

They chose a topic which caused conflict in their relationship before having five puffs of oxytocin or a placebo spray. After 45 minutes they were left alone in a room and filmed discussing the contentious issue.

Researchers monitored the participants, taking saliva swabs to check for compounds showing how the nervous system was working.

The findings revealed that compared to those who took the placebo, women who sniffed oxytocin were more friendly, less demanding while men were more positive and more likely to engage.

There was a drop in nervous system activity for women while in men it went up.

According to the researchers, women tend to show demanding behaviour more frequently and men tend to withdraw. 'In out study, oxytocin might have driven quiescence in women and social salience and approach behaviour in men,' the journal reported.

Nottingham University professor Kavita Vedhara believes the study has shown that oxytocin reduces women's 'emotional and physiological arousal following verbal conflict' while the opposite happens to men.

Scientists have previously found that a man's libido was improved when he sniffed a spray containing oxytocin.

Research at the University of California reported that a married man who sniffed the spray twice a day saw a considerable improvement in his sexual performance.

His libido went from 'weak to strong' while arousal levels went from 'difficult to easy.'

In an unusual scientific experiment, couples who sprayed themselves with a compound containing the hormone oxytocin before they discussed contentious issues then behaved more positively.

Women were less emotionally aroused and men more aroused after using the spray. According to researchers, the women who took part in the tests were more friendly, less demanding and less anxious, while men were more aware of social cues, more positive, and more likely to engage.

Oxytocin is produced mainly in the hypothalamus region of the brain. It had been studied in women because it is released during labour to dilate the cervix, boost contractions and to trigger the release of milk in the breasts.

In the new study, reported in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, researchers looked at its effects on stress and the activity of the autonomic nervous system during disagreements between couples.

This part of the nervous system automatically regulates organs of the body, and research has shown it is more active during conflict between couples, leading to increased heart rate and blood pressure.

Forty-seven couples, aged 20 to 50, who were married or had been cohabiting for at least a year, took part in the study at the University of Zurich. Couples chose a topic to discuss about which they continually disagreed, and then self-administered five puffs of either the oxytocin or a placebo spray.

Forty-five minutes later, each couple was left alone in a room and filmed while they talked about the subject that usually rubbed them up the wrong way.

At various times during the experiments, the researchers took saliva swabs to check for compounds that show how the nervous system is working.

The results showed that, compared to those who had sniffed the placebo, women who had the oxytocin spray experienced a drop in nervous system activity, whereas in the men it went up. The men displayed increased positive behaviour; the women became more friendly.

In general, the researchers say, women tend to show demanding behaviour more frequently, while men tend to withdraw: 'In our study, oxytocin might have driven quiescence in women and social salience and approach behaviour in men.''

Kavita Vedhara, professor of health psychology at Nottingham University, said the findings were very interesting: 'We are much clearer about the biological role of oxytocin in women, but these data suggest it could have significant effects in men.

What they have shown is that oxytocin appears to reduce women's emotional and physiological arousal following verbal conflict, but that the drug has the opposite effect on men, increasing both their emotional and physiological arousal.

It is not clear if the increased emotion in men was always positive, but it was certainly associated with more positive behaviours during the conflict situation.'

The researchers now want to look further into the possible benefits of oxytocin on warring couples.

'It is possible that the effect simply produced short-term changes in how couples interact with each other,' said Professor Vedhara.

'This might help to take the heat out of an argument. But whether it helps to resolve the issues that lead to the arguments is not clear.'

The Haryana Government would provide free of cost medical treatment to students up to 18 years of age enrolled in all government schools and Anganwari centres under the Indira Bal Swasthya Yojna (IBSY). The scheme would also include treatment for cancer and heart ailments, National Rural Health Mission Director Rakesh Gupta said in a meeting today to prepare a blueprint for better execution of IBSY in the state. Under this scheme, children would be given treatment at the Post-Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences, Rohtak, Post-Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh and other major health care institutes. IBSY being run by Health Department could be given a new dimension with the help of Sarva Sikhsha Abhiyan and Education Department to improve the level of health of children between 0 and 18 years, he said. Gupta said the children would be diagnosed for anaemia and this work would be carried out jointly by the Education and Health departments. For this, teachers would be trained at the block level to examine children and laboratory technicians of the Health Department would visit the schools to check the level of haemoglobin in children. If the level is low, after examination by a doctor the child would be given a dose of Iron-Folic Acid tablets free of cost. Gupta said if any child is found suffering from severe anaemia, he/she would be referred to a health institute for free and better treatment there. Under this scheme eyes of children would also be checked, and if needed, free spectacles would be provided to them. In addition to it, he said, differently abled children would be diagnosed by doctors and they will be provided with Disability Certificate after evaluation of their capabilities, besides free remedial surgery, he added.

It may look disgusting, but scientists believe this worm could hold the key to battling a range of debilitating eye diseases.

The planarian flatworm is able to recreate missing parts of its body, even as adults, and it has been studied intensely by researchers.

They have now decoded the full genome of the worm's eye - and believe it could play a 'starring role' as a model for studying eye development and eye diseases, according to the journal, Cell Reports.

Professor Peter Reddien, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), said: 'It's exciting to get this complete list of genes in one fell swoop.

'This provides perhaps the most comprehensive list of genes involved in eye biology in a model system other than Drosophila that can be used for rapidly studying the function of those genes.'

The most studied previous model for eye development were the compound eyes of fruit flies, as their genes are well documented.

But the worms present a new line of research.

Prof Reddien, along with graduate student Sylvain Lapan, analysed more than 2,000 planarian eyes, finding 600 active genes and studying 200 of them in more detail.

Several of the identified genes are known to have versions that play a role in the vertebrate eye but have not been found in the fruit fly eye.

Among these are genes involved in eye development and others associated with age-related macular degeneration and Usher syndrome, a disorder that causes progressive retinal degradation.

A key gene is the transcription factor ovo, which activates the expression of many other genes as the eye forms.

It had not been associated with eyes until the latest study, and was found to be vital for eye generation in planarian worms.

When ovo is experimentally turned off, planarians with head amputations cannot regenerate their eyes and eyes of otherwise normal adult planarians vanish after a couple months.

Ms Lapan said: 'Similar mechanisms are used to make eyes during homeostasis, regeneration, and embryonic development in planarians.

'We now know way more about genes that regulate eye formation in these animals than for any invertebrate other than Drosophila.

Planarian eyes are very different from fly eyes, and we're already seeing the benefits of studying diverse model species, like the discovery of a critical role for ovo.'

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a chronic condition that affects millions of children and often persists into adulthood

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a chronic condition that affects millions of children and often persists into adulthood.

ADHD includes some combination of problems, such as difficulty sustaining attention, hyperactivity and impulsive behaviour.

Children with ADHD also may struggle with low self-esteem, troubled relationships and poor performance in school.

While treatment won't cure ADHD, it can help a great deal with symptoms. Treatment typically involves medications and behavioural interventions.

A diagnosis of ADHD can be scary, and symptoms can be a challenge for parents and children alike. However, treatment can make a big difference, and most children with ADHD grow up to be normal adults.

ADHD has been called attention-deficit disorder (ADD) in the past. But, ADHD is now the preferred term because it describes both primary aspects of the condition: inattention and hyperactive-impulsive behaviour.

While many children who have ADHD tend more toward one category than the other, most children have some combination of inattention and hyperactive-impulsive behaviour.

ADHD symptoms become more apparent during activities that require focused mental effort.

In order to be diagnosed with ADHD, signs and symptoms of the disorder must appear before the age of 7.

In some children, signs of ADHD are noticeable as early as 2 or 3 years of age.

Twitter may already be used to plan social lives, interact with celebrities and communicate with friends.

But now a researcher believes the social networking site could have a far more serious use - tracking disease.

Researchers have already used the site to track flu as it spreads through New York using a 'heatmap' of users who complain of being ill.

Adam Sadilek at the University of Rochester and his team analyzed 4.4 million GPS-tagged Tweets from over 600,000 users in New York City over the course of one month in 2010.

They trained their artificial intelligence algorithm to ignore tweets by healthy people such as those claiming they were 'sick' of a particular song, and trained it to find those who were really ill.

Sadilek says the key to his system is friendships.

'Given that three of your friends have flu-like symptoms, and that you have recently met eight people, possibly strangers, who complained about having runny noses and headaches, what is the probability that you will soon become ill as well?' he said.

'Our models enable you to see the spread of infectious diseases, such as flu, throughout a real-life population observed through online social media.'

The tweets were plotted on a map, and used to predict when a particular users was at high risk of getting ill.

'We apply machine learning and natural language understanding techniques to determine the health state of Twitter users at any given time,' Mr Sadilek said.

'Since a large fraction of tweets is geo-tagged, we can plot them on a map, and observe how sick and healthy people interact.

'Our model then predicts if and when an individual will fall ill with high accuracy, thereby improving our understanding of the emergence of global epidemics from people's day-to-day interactions.'

The heatmaps show a city going through a flu epidemic.

The more red an area is, the more people are afflicted by flu at that location.

'We show emergent aggregate patterns in real-time, with second-by-second resolution,' boasted Sadilek.

'By contrast, previous state-of-the-art methods (including Google Flu Trends and government data) entail time lags from days to years.'

The algorithm looked not just at users' friends' health, but also strangers in the same area.

The algorithm was correct 90 percent of the time and about eight days in advance, the team said.

In unpublished findings described to New Scientist during an interview at the Conference on Artifical Intelligence in Toronto, Canada,the team also revealed that people who go to the gym regularly are moderately less likely to get sick.

People with low socio-economic status, on the other hand, are much more likely to become ill.