News Articles

Aside from Earth, Saturn's largest moon Titan looks to be the only place in the solar system with copious quantities of liquid (largely, liquid methane and ethane) sitting on its surface. But that's not the only similarity our home and Titan share. A team of planetary astronomers recently announced that the two share yet another feature, which is inextricably linked with that surface liquid: common fog.The team discussed their findings in a recent paper published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters as well as in a presentation at the American Geophysical Union's 2009 Fall Meeting in San Francisco.

A new study featured online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that depression patients are unable to sustain activity in brain areas related to positive emotion. The authors say The study challenges previous notions that individuals with depression show less brain activity in areas associated with positive emotion. Instead, the new data suggest similar initial levels of activity, but an inability to sustain them over time.During the study, 27 depressed patients and 19 control participants were presented with visual images intended to evoke either a positive or a negative emotional response. While viewing these images, participants were instructed to use cognitive strategies to increase,

In order to benefit from their natural resources, states need fewer regulations, lower taxes, and stronger private property rights, according to a new study by a Florida State University economist. The study offers an empirical analysis weighing the economic growth rates of resource-dependent states against the Economic Freedom of North America index (which operates on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the freest) to determine the level of economic freedom required for states to benefit from natural resource development. Research suggests that in regions lacking policies consistent with free markets, private-property rights and a stable and fair legal system, natural resource dependence can weaken economic growth — a phenomenon known as the "resource curse."

A group of paleontologists has discovered a venomous, birdlike raptor that thrived some 128 million years ago in China, and is the first reported venomous ancestor in the lineage that leads to modern birds. The discovery is documented this week  in the early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.The dromaeosaur or raptor, Sinornithosaurus (Chinese-bird-lizard), is a close relative to Velociraptor. It lived in prehistoric forests of northeastern China that were filled with a diverse assemblage of animals including other primitive birds and dinosaurs.

According to an upcoming study in the March Issue of Alcoholism: Clinical&Experimental Research, alcohol and marijuana use may be explained by the same genetic factors, lending support to the notion that there are common mechanisms underlying all addictions, the authors say.Researchers examined 6,257 individuals (2,761 complete twin pairs and 735 singletons) listed in the Australian Twin Registry, 24 to 36 years of age.  Alcohol and marijuana use histories were gathered in telephone diagnostic interviews and used to derive levels of alcohol consumption, frequency of marijuana use, and DSM-IV alcohol and cannabis dependence symptoms.

Researchers studying climate change during the early Pliocene have concluded that slow changes such as melting ice sheets amplified the initial warming caused by greenhouse gases, and that a relatively small rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels wasassociated with substantial global warming about 4.5 million years ago.  The findings are published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

A new study suggests that the increase of MRSA in healthcare settings results from clinicians who prescribe antibiotics more often and more broadly than clinical circumstances and evidence-based guidelines warrant because of medical liability concerns.So it isn't politicians or insurance companies who are picking your treatment, it is lawyers.  

Nanotechnology is a big buzzword this decade but there are questions about how safe nano-based products are and we are unsure how to even measure,  much less regulate, them.
Anti-odor socks, makeup, makeup remover, sunscreen, anti-graffiti paint, home pregnancy tests, plastic beer bottles, anti-bacterial doorknobs, plastic bags for storing vegetables, and more than 800 other products are already in use so time is critical.

Dark spots on flower petals are common across many angiosperm plant families and occur on some flowers such as lilies, orchids, and considerable research has been done on the physiological and behavioral mechanisms for how these spots attract pollinators, but what these spots are composed of, how they develop, and how they only appear on some but not all of the ray florets has long been a puzzle. Dr. Meredith Thomas from the University of Cambridge and associates from England and South Africa focused on the South African endemic beetle daisy Gorteria diffusa (Asteraceae), which has a unique, raised, dark spot at the base of some of its ray florets to help find deeper answers.  The American Journal of Botany published the results of the study.

If your kids want a Wii, PlayStation or Xbox 360 this holiday season, you may actually have good reason to give them one; it turns out there is some redeeming value in the hours that kids spend transfixed by these video game systems.  A new study in Current Directions in Psychological Science reports that regular gamers are fast and accurate information processors, not only during game play, but in real-life situations as well.

With the publication of a new study in Cellular Microbiology, an international team of researchers has shed new light on the infection strategy of Salmonella, suggesting that scientists will have to reassess their understanding of how the pathogens invade host cells.Although Salmonella are long-known pathogens, the precise mechanisms they use to infect are incompletely understood. The bacteria inject a protein cocktail into host cells using a molecular syringe, leading to dramatic rearrangements of cytoskeletal filaments below the cell membrane.

The potentially damaging effects of marijuana on young brains may be even worse than previously thought, according to new research conducted by scientists from McGill University. Their new study, published in Neurobiology of Disease, suggests that teenagers who consume marijuana daily face a higher risk of depression and anxiety, and may suffer irreversible neurological effects."We wanted to know what happens in the brains of teenagers when they use cannabis and whether they are more susceptible to its neurological effects than adults," explained McGill University researcher Gabriella Gobbi.