Obesity rates have leveled off and even started to decline for many adolescents, but not certain racial and ethnic minorities, according to a new study. 

The study says it is the first to find significant differences in obesity trends over time by race and ethnicity and this evidence of increasing racial disparities for obesity underscores the need for more tailored intervention programs and policies that target high-risk groups, the authors conclude.

Coal isn't popular everywhere these days, particularly in Africa.  Driven by economic growth and demand, electricity within sub-Saharan Africa is rapidly approaching supply capacity and in many countries exceeding it. The demand for new generation capacity is boosting growth in the steam turbine market for the region. 

 The sub-Saharan African steam turbine market is expected to grow considerably due to the cost efficiencies in power production attained from coal-fired power plants in coal-rich countries, according to Frost Sullivan research. The emergence of combined cycle technologies and development of the geothermal power industry in East Africa are also likely to open up new market opportunities. 

Citizen scientists are doing big things in astronomy in 2010.   A few days ago, three amateurs discovered PSR J2007+2722, a neutron star that rotates 41 times per second and a recent Science article highlights V407 Cyg in the constellation Cygnus, which is 9,000 light-years away and is a symbiotic binary containing a compact white dwarf and a red giant star about 500 times the size of the sun.

On March 11, amateur astronomers Koichi Nishiyama and Fujio Kabashima in Miyaki-cho of Saga Prefecture in Japan imaged a dramatic change in the brightness of V407 Cyg - 10 times brighter than an image they had taken three days earlier.

A few months ago, Google opened the Android Market to allow anyone to load software but now studies show that an average of one in every five applications had access to personal information , which could lead to all sorts of viruses, spyware, and malware being created to attack users.  

The majority of "fused" people, those who view themselves as completely immersed in a group, are willing to commit extreme acts for the good of their compatriots, says research soon to appear in  Psychological Science.

In the study, the researchers recruited 506 college students at the Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia in Spain. Based on the students' answers in online questionnaires, the researchers identified 38 percent of the participants as "fused" as compared to "non-fused," with Spain. They then measured their self-sacrificial behaviors.

If you want to really get back to nature, it still involves meat.  A team of researchers has discovered evidence that human ancestors were using stone tools and consuming the meat and marrow of large mammals 1 million years earlier than previously documented.

While working in the Afar region of Ethiopia, the Dikika Research Project (DRP) found bones bearing unambiguous evidence of stone tool use - cut marks made while carving meat off the bone and percussion marks created while breaking the bones open to extract marrow. The bones date to roughly 3.4 million years ago and provide the first evidence that Lucy's species, Australopithecus afarensis, used stone tools and consumed meat.