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A simple and primitive animal, Trichoplax adhaerens, appears to harbor a far more complex suite of capabilities than meets the eye. The findings, reported Nature, establish a group of organisms as a branching point of animal evolution and identify sets of genes, or a "parts list," employed by organisms that have evolved along particular branches.
Trichoplax adhaerens was first detected in the 1880s clinging to the sides of an aquarium but it just recently got characterized by the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI)and they found that its ancient lineage was matched by its complexity.

According to new research in the Journal of Consumer Research, simply asking people a question about whether they're willing to volunteer their time leads to increases in donations of both time and money.
The researchers conducted three separate studies, which yielded similar results. In the first study, participants completed an online survey and then read a statement about lung cancer and the American Lung Cancer Foundation's mission. Half of the participants were asked how much time they would like to donate to the foundation and half were not asked. Then all were asked how much money they would donate to the foundation. The participants who were asked to donate time eventually pledged more than those who weren't asked: $36.44 versus $24.46.

Biologists and biochemists are now able to access 3-D images of biomacromolecules underlying biological functions and disease, thanks to a collaborative website called Proteopedia which provides a new resource by linking written information and three-dimensional structural information.
Rather than relying just on text to provide the understanding of biomacromolecule structures, this wiki web resource, first described in Genome Biology, displays protein structures and other biomacromolecules in interactive format. These interactive images are surrounded by descriptive text containing hyperlinks that change the appearance (such as view, representations, colors or labels) of the adjacent 3D structure to reflect the concept explained in the text.
This makes the complex structural information readily accessible and comprehensible, even to people who are not structural biologists.

We don't need to 'frame' science for the masses, no matter what you may read elsewhere by people who want to manipulate data to achieve their ideological goals.
Informed people who make their own decisions(whether they agree with you or not) and then participate improves the overall quality of federal agencies' decisions about the environment, says a new report from the National Research Council.
More importantly, public involvement increases the legitimacy of decisions in the eyes of those affected by them, which makes it more likely that the decisions will be implemented effectively - something heavy-handed mandates can never accomplish. Agencies should recognize public participation as valuable to their objectives, not just as a formality required by the law, the report says. It details principles and approaches agencies can use to successfully involve the public.

What we see can sometimes depend as much on our ears as on our eyes, according to research led by Dr Elliot Freeman, lecturer in psychology at Brunel University’s School of Social Sciences and published this week in Current Biology.
The study revealed that the perceived direction of motion from a given visual object (in this case, red bars across a screen), depends on minute variations in the timing of an accompanying sound (a sequence of beeps, for example). This provides evidence that the brain’s integration of these visual and audio cues occurs at a very early stage of processing.

A predisposition to adult snoring can be established very early in life, according to research published today in Respiratory Research. The study describes possible childhood risk factors, including exposure to animals, early respiratory or ear infections and even growing up in a large family.
Karl A Franklin from University Hospital Umeå, Sweden, and a team of Nordic researchers questioned more than sixteen thousand randomly selected people from Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Denmark and Estonia about their childhood and their snoring habits. According to Franklin “A total of 15,556 subjects answered the questions on snoring. Habitual snoring, defined as loud and disturbing snoring at least three nights a week, was reported by 18%.”
Risk factors related to snoring:

An international study of the effects of Hormone Replacement Therapy(HRT) use on quality of life has shown that HRT use can significantly improve wellbeing in women with menopausal symptoms such as hot flushes and night sweats.
This study looked at health-related quality of life in 5692 health women aged 50-69 in the UK, Australia and New Zealand.
The International Menopause Society notes that the study found that about 3 out of 4 women who complained of night sweats and hot flushes, found that these symptoms had vanished after a year of HRT use. Even in women who were well past menopause and did not suffer hot flushes, there was a noted improvement in sleep, sexuality and joint pain as a result of HRT use.

The mystery of how young stars can form within the deep gravity of black holes has been solved by a team of astrophysicists at the Universities of St Andrews and Edinburgh.
The team, partly funded by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), made the discovery after developing computer simulations of giant clouds of gas being sucked into black holes. The new research may help scientists gain better understanding of the origin of stars and supermassive black holes in our Galaxy and the Universe.
Until now, scientists have puzzled over how stars could form around a black hole, since molecular clouds - the normal birth places of stars - would be ripped apart by the black hole's immense gravitational pull.

They have worked for almost seven years in secret.
Most people did not know that the work in Ray Goehner's materials characterization department at Sandia National Laboratories was contributing important information to the FBI's investigation of letters containing bacillus anthracis, the spores that cause the disease anthrax. The spores were mailed in the fall of 2001 to several news media offices and to two U.S. senators. Five people were killed.
Sandia's work demonstrated to the FBI that the form of bacillus anthracis contained in those letters was not a weaponized form, a form of the bacteria prepared to disperse more readily. The possibility of a weaponized form was of great concern to investigators, says Joseph Michael, the principal investigator for the project. This information was crucial in ruling out state-sponsored terrorism.

Air circulates above the Earth in four distinct cells, with two either side of the equator, says new research out today in Science.
The new observational study describes how air rises and falls in the atmosphere above the Earth’s surface, creating the world’s weather. This process of atmospheric circulation creates weather patterns and influences the climate of the planet. It is important to understand these processes in order to predict weather events, and to improve and test climate models.
Previous theories have claimed that there are just two large circular systems of air in the atmosphere, one either side of the equator. These theories suggested that air rises at the equator and then travels towards either the north or south polar regions, where it falls.

A study by a group of prominent seismologists suggests that a pattern of subtle but active faults makes the risk of earthquakes to the New York City area substantially greater than formerly believed. Among other things, they say that the controversial Indian Point nuclear power plants, 24 miles north of the city, sit astride the previously unidentified intersection of two active seismic zones.

There are two big problems we face; energy and health. Zhiyou Wen, assistant professor of biological systems engineering in Virginia Tech's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, has found a way to tackle both using biodiesel.
The typical American diet often lacks omega-3 fatty acids despite clinical research that shows their potential human health benefits and biodiesel plants leave behind approximately 10 percent crude glycerol during the production process.
This has led the price of glycerol, a chemical compound widely used in the pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries, to drop in recent years. The rise in biodiesel production over the last decade means that the market can no longer absorb all the extra glycerol so biodiesel producers must find alternative means for disposing of crude glycerol, which is prohibitively expensive to purify for industry use.