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Amyloid, an abnormal protein whose accumulation in the brain is a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease, starts accumulating inside neurons of people as young as 20, a much younger age than scientists ever imagined, according to a new study based  on brains obtained from the Northwestern University Alzheimer's Disease Center Brain Bank and from pathologists throughout the United States.  

Synthetic cannabinoids ("synthetic marijuana"), with names like Spice, K2, Scooby Doo and hundreds of others, are often sold as a safe, "legal" alternative to marijuana but that is just marketing by drug dealers. Synthetic marijuana was linked to 11,561 reports of poisonings in the United States between January 2009 and April 2012. It's no surprise that it has grown popular among teens, that is why legal businesses like cigarettes and alcohol cannot market to kids. In 2011, synthetic marijuana was used by 11.4% of high school seniors in the US, making it the most commonly used drug - after real marijuana. 

Low birth weight is indicative of various problems and fortunately modern science has made it possible for more low-birth weight babies than ever to thrive, survival is over 94 percent for children born in the third trimester of pregnancy.But low birth weight is being linked to residual effects and in a new paper researchers find that underweight infants may eventually become the grandparents of children at a higher risk for metabolic problems like high cholesterol, diabetes, and obesity, according to a new study.

Quantum mechanics tells us that light can behave simultaneously as a particle or a wave, but researchers haven't been able to capture both natures of light at the same time; the closest we have come is seeing either wave or particle at different times.
When UV light hits a metal surface, it causes an emission of electrons. Albert Einstein explained this "photoelectric" effect by proposing that light - thought to only be a wave - is also a stream of particles. Even though a variety of experiments have successfully observed both the particle- and wave-like behaviors of light, they have never been able to observe both at the same time.

Antipsychotic medications for pediatric patients climbed 62 percent for children on Medicaid between 2002 and 2007, reaching 2.4 percent of those youth. Unless we really believe that poor kids are undergoing an epidemic of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, it's time to examine prescription practices. More kids nationwide are taking medications designed to treat such mental illnesses as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and pediatricians and psychiatrists at the University of Vermont want to know why.David Rettew, M.D., associate professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at University of Vermont, and colleagues conducted a study to find out "whether the right youth are being prescribed the right medications at the proper time in their treatment."

In 2008, President Obama suggested vaccines might be causing autism. In 2009, during the H1N1 swine flu pandemic, there was quickly a vaccine shortage, because the government refused to allow adjuvants, to boost vaccine effectiveness and use less raw material, or multi-dose vials, because they contained a preservative anti-vaccine believers claimed caused autism. 274,000 Americans were hospitalized.

Researchers have found that by changing the selectivity of an enzyme, a small molecule could potentially be used to decrease the likelihood of alcohol-related cancers in an at-risk population.

The characteristic blue glow from a nuclear reactor is present in radiation therapy, too. Investigators from Dartmouth's Norris Cotton Cancer Center, led by Brian W. Pogue, PhD, and PhD candidates Adam K. Glaser and Rongxiao Zhang, published in Physics in Medicine and Biology how the complex parts of the blue light known as the Cherenkov Effect can be measured and used in dosimetry to make therapies safer and more effective.
"The beauty of using the light from the Cherenkov Effect for dosimetry is that it's the only current method that can reveal dosimetric information completely non-invasively in water or tissue," said Glaser.

75 percent of movies released to theaters lose money, making the film industry even less able to pick winners in the private sector than the government. Surely there has to be a better method than greenlighting a movie because another studio is doing the same movie, or because someone has heard of M. Night Shyamalan.
A new study finds that brain activity visible through electroencephalography (EEG) could be a better barometer of success, at least if making money is the goal. 

Fossil "swim tracks," a type of vertebrate trace fossil gaining recognition in the field of paleontology, is  made by various tetrapods (four-footed land-living vertebrates) as they traveled through water under buoyant or semibuoyant conditions.They occur in high numbers in deposits from the Early Triassic,  between the Permian and Jurassic 250 to 200 million years ago. Major extinction events mark the start and end of the Triassic but it is a but of a mystery why tracks from the period are so abundant and well preserved.Tracy J. Thomson next to a block with numerous swim tracks in Capitol Reef National Park, Utah. 

Researchers in Australia have found that corals commonly found on the Great Barrier Reef will eat micro-plastic pollution - but there are obviously limits.
Microplastics are tiny fragments of plastic in the environment and are a widespread contaminant in marine ecosystems, particularly in inshore coral reefs. Corals are non-selective feeders and a new study shows that they can consume microplastics when the plastics are present in seawater, but obviously if it increases, corals could be negatively affected as their tiny stomach-cavities become full of indigestible plastic.
Despite the proliferation of microplastics, their impact on marine ecosystems is poorly understood.

Credit: Brill
In some ways, bonobos and chimpanzees are more similar to humans than they are each other and for that reason bonobos can provide an extremely powerful test of ideas about human uniqueness, as well as being crucial to determining the evolutionary processes by which cognitive traits evolve in apes.
A special issue of Behaviour includes twelve empirical studies focusing on the behavior and cognition of both captive and wild bonobos (Pan paniscus). The contributors believe that a renaissance in bonobo research is underway.