We call them ‘man's best friend’, and the evidence supports it. Dogs have been found buried alongside humans in graves dating back 14,000 years. They appear in ancient art from every continent, and they feature in the mythology, religion and folklore of virtually every culture. Archaeological evidence shows they have helped us hunt, protected our homes, hauled our possessions, herded our livestock and provided companionship through the entirety of recorded history.

Women live longer than men in nearly every country in the world, yet they experience higher rates of disability, dementia and many other age-related conditions. Scientists have long noted these differences, but they still do not fully understand why they occur — or how that knowledge can be used to improve healthy aging. A new $7.5 million, five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health will establish the USC Geroscience Specialized Center of Research Excellence on Sex Differences in Aging (GeroSCORE) to address that challenge.

Biologists show how the prefrontal cortex, a brain region associated with learning more flexible behaviors, can sometimes block the ability of a mouse to adopt a better way to solve a problem.