When most people think of the Antarctic, they think of snow, ice and glaciers - but the continent and surrounding waters are littered with fiery volcanoes.

The Marie Byrd Seamounts in the Amundsen Sea are not active, like many volcanoes there are. Their summit plateaus are today at depths of 2400-1600 meters but, because they are very difficult to reach with conventional research vessels, they have hardly been explored.

What is intriguing is that they do not fit any of the usual models for the formation of volcanoes. Now geologists from GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel were able to find a possible explanation for the existence of these seamounts on the basis of rare specimens. 

A new analysis of data on over 3,000 elderly Americans strongly suggests that people over the age of 75 with normal cognition who used diuretics, angiotensin-1 receptor blockers (ARBs) and angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors showed a reduced risk of AD dementia by at least 50 percent. In addition, diuretics were associated with 50 percent reduced risk in those in the group with mild cognitive impairment.

Beta blockers and calcium channel blockers did not show a link to reduced risk, the researchers reported.

Alzheimer's disease is a public health issue in aging population and the most common cause of intellectual and social decline.

You wouldn't think the brightest exploding stars ever discovered in the universe could need some light shed on them, but they got it anyway.

A new paper proposes that the most luminous supernovae – exploding stars – are powered by small and incredibly dense neutron stars, with gigantic magnetic fields that spin hundreds of times a second.

Scientists observed two super-luminous supernovae for more than a year. Contrary to existing theories, which suggested that the brightest supernovae are caused by super-massive stars exploding, the findings suggest that their origins may be better explained by a type of explosion within the star's core which creates a smaller but extremely dense and rapidly spinning magnetic star.

Schizophrenia patients often suffer from a breakdown of organized thought, accompanied by delusions or hallucinations - neuroscientists have observed the neural activity that appears to produce this disordered thinking and found that mice lacking the brain protein calcineurin have hyperactive brain-wave oscillations in the hippocampus while resting, and are unable to mentally replay a route they have just run, as normal mice do.

A new paper says that babies can tell when something is wrong — as early as 18 months.

The intermediate Palomar Transient Factory (iPTF) was developed to help scientists learn more about the complex nature of celestial objects in the universe and began searching the skies for certain types of stars and related phenomena in February.