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The combination of a natural gravitational lens and a sophisticated telescope array has given astronomers the clearest view to date of the "star factories" in SMM J2135-0102, a galaxy over 10 billion light-years from Earth. The distant galaxy, they say, is making new stars 250 times faster than our Galaxy, the Milky Way.Astronomers also pinpointed four discrete star-forming regions within the galaxy, each over 100 times brighter than locations where stars form in our Galaxy. This is the first time that astronomers have been able to study properties of individual star-forming regions within a galaxy so far from Earth.

Past studies have suggested that high-fructose corn syrup and other sweeteners like table sugar are nutritionally identical. But the authors of a new study in Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior say that's not so. When it comes to weight gain, the study found, rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained significantly more weight than those with access to table sugar, even when their overall caloric intake was the same.

We can do a lot of things to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions often blamed for climate change, but cutting back on consumption of meat and dairy products isn't one of them, according to a report presented at the National Meeting of the American Chemical Society.Giving cows and pigs a bum rap is not only scientifically inaccurate, but also distracts society from embracing effective solutions to global climate change, says UC Davis Professor of Animal Science Frank Mitloehner. He noted that the notion is becoming deeply rooted in efforts to curb global warming, citing campaigns for "meatless Mondays" and a European campaign, called "Less Meat = Less Heat," launched late last year.

The process that lights up big-screen plasma TV displays could also help produce ultra-clean fuels, according to research presented this week at the National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS). The research describes a small, low-tech, inexpensive device called a GlidArc reactor that uses electrically-charged clouds of gas called "plasmas" to produce clean fuels from waste materials. One is a diesel fuel that releases 10 times less air pollution than its notoriously sooty, smelly conventional counterpart.

Scientists claim that helium rain is the best explanation for the scarcity of neon in the outer layers of Jupiter, the solar system's largest planet. Neon dissolves in the helium raindrops and falls towards the deeper interior where it re-dissolves, depleting the upper layers of both elements, say the authors of the new report in Physical Review Letters.The research will help refine models of Jupiter's interior and the interiors of other planets. Modeling planetary interiors has become a hot research area since the discovery of hundreds of extrasolar planets living in extreme environments around other stars. The study will also be relevant for NASA's Juno mission to Jupiter, which is scheduled to be launched next year.

Paleontologists have discovered a new raptor species in Inner Mongolia.  The exceptionally well preserved dinosaur, named Linheraptor exquisitus, is the first near complete skeleton of its kind to be found in the Gobi desert since 1972, and will help scientists work out the appearance of other closely related dinosaur species.A study documenting the find was published today in Zootaxa.Linheraptor is in the Dromaeosauridae family of the carnivorous theropod dinosaurs and lived during the Late Cretaceous period. In addition to Linheraptor and Velociraptor, theropod dinosaurs include charismatic meat-eaters like Tyrannosaurus rex and modern birds.

Despite several social psychological theories that suggest otherwise, failing to meet educational goals does not result in depression, say sociologists from Floria and Kansas State Universities.Their study in American Sociological review indicates that making no attempt to achieve extravagant educational goals is, in fact, the way to encourage depression. The authors used two national studies of youth, the National Longitudinal Study and the Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (ADD Health), both of which track respondents over a period of time, to test whether unrealized expectations are associated with depression in adulthood.

If the idea was ever in doubt, psychologists writing in Social Psychological and Personality Science say they have confirmed that pretty girls make boys do dumb things. Specifically, they say the presence of an attractive woman elevates testosterone levels and physical risk taking in young men.For the study, young adult men were asked to perform both easy and difficult tricks on skateboards, first in front of another male and then in front of a young, attractive female. The skateboarder's testosterone levels were measured after each trick.

Researchers have long been puzzled by large societies in whichstrangers routinely engage in voluntary acts of kindness and respect even though there is often an individual cost involved.Evolutionary forces associated with kinship and reciprocity can explain such cooperative behavior among other primates, but the same isn't true for large societies of strangers. A new study published today in Science suggests that the cooperative nature of each society may be explained in part by religious beliefs and the growth of market transactions. The study also found the extent to which a society uses punishment to enforce norms increases and decreases with the number of people in the society.

Scientists at the University of California, San Diego are undertaking an expedition to explore the rupture site of the 8.8-magnitude Chilean earthquake.The team hopes to capitalize on a unique opportunity to capture fresh data from the event by studying changes in the seafloor that resulted from movements along faults and submarine landslides.The "rapid response" expedition, called the Survey of Earthquake And Rupture Offshore Chile, will take place aboard the research vessel Melville.Scientists will map the rupture site of the 8.8-magnitude earthquake in Chile.

A Penn State physicist is looking at how songbirds transmit impulses through nerve cells in the brain to produce a complex behavior, such as singing.The research will help scientists gain insight into how the human brain functions, which may lead to a better understanding of complex vocal behavior, human speech production and ultimately, speech disorders and related diseases.The findings were presented this week at the American Physical Society's March meeting in Portland.Songbirds are particularly well suited for studying speech production and syntax -- the rules of syllable or word sequence -- because there are more similarities between birdsong and human speech than one may initially think.

Genetic engineering may one day turn the Anopheles mosquito, the transmitter of malaria, into a natural 'flying vaccinator' for the disease, a new study in Insect Molecular Biology suggests. Scientists have successfully generated a transgenic mosquito expressing the Leishmania vaccine within its saliva. Bites from the insect succeeded in raising antibodies, indicating successful immunization with the vaccine through blood feeding.The research, led by Associate Professor Shigeto Yoshida from the Jichi Medical University in Japan, targets the saliva gland of the mosquitoes, the main vectors of human malaria.