When nails appeared on all fingers and toes in modern primates about 55 million years ago, they led to the development of critical functions, including finger pads that allow for sensitive touch and the ability to grasp.

Recent data demonstrate that fossil-fuel related emissions of both methane and ethane, two of the most abundant hydrocarbons in the atmosphere, declined at the end of the twentieth century, according to a paper in Nature.

The causes of the decline in methane emission rates to the atmosphere have been puzzling scientists for some time. This new study shows that a change in human activities may have played a key role in the recent leveling off of methane, which has 23X the warming effect of CO2.

In many cases, you can determine a child's age by what affliction their helicopter parents have saddled them with and you don't even have to meet the kid.  If they are ADHD, for example, they are likely close to graduating high school.  If you look in a grade school today, 25 percent of kids will be on 'the spectrum' for Autism and those that aren't may have a life-threatening allergy.

A generation ago, very few children had allergies to nuts and so it was taken seriously.   Today, with hyperactive parents flipping out in restaurants over nothing every day, there is a lot more skepticism.  The result is that actual nut-allergy sufferers face hostility and disbelief when trying to find safe environments for their children.

In patients with seriously altered states of consciousness, there is also the puzzle about dreaming.   Do ‘vegetative’ patients (also known in clunkier, politically correct fashion as patients in a state of unresponsive wakefulness) or minimally conscious state patients experience normal sleep?  Electrophysiological studies have been no help so the hypothesis is if the vegetative state opens no conscious door onto the external world, the state of minimal consciousness for its part assumes a residual consciousness of the environment, certainly fluctuating but real.

Twin detectors recently installed in the first of three experimental halls in the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment are now recording interactions of elementary antineutrinos produced by powerful reactors at the China Guangdong Nuclear Power Group power plant located about 55 kilometers from Hong Kong.

China and the U.S. lead the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment, which also includes participants from Russia, the Czech Republic, Hong Kong, and Taiwan and the event marks the first step in the international effort to measure a puzzling property of neutrinos and antineutrinos that may underlie basic properties of matter and why matter predominates over antimatter in the universe.

Four new studies have found that when a woman's goal is to be romantically desirable, she is less likely to go into majors and activities related to science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).  The studies were undertaken to determine why women, who have achieved parity in education, getting more Ph.D.s than men, and also in the workplace, continue to be underrepresented at the highest levels of STEM fields.

They found converging support for the idea that when romantic goals are activated women (but not men) show less interest in STEM fields and more interest in feminine fields, such as the humanities, education and social sciences.  

Lead author Lora E.