Paleontologists have unearthed a previously unknown Theropod dinosaur from a fossil bone bed in northern New Mexico, settling a debate about early dinosaur evolution, and hinting at how dinosaurs spread across the supercontinent Pangaea.

 The description of the new species, named Tawa after the Hopi word for the Puebloan sun god, appears in the Dec. 10 issue of the journal Science.

“Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.”

That sentence from American journalism’s best-known Santa Claus editorial (the New York Sun’s “Is There A Santa Claus?”) is still so popular that 112 years after it first ran, Macy’s is basing its holiday advertising campaign on it for the second consecutive year. 

This year, Macy’s and the CBS television network are co-sponsoring an animated children’s program about Virginia O’Hanlon, the eight year old girl who sent her inquiry “Please tell me the truth. Is There A Santa Claus?” to the Sun in 1897.

The Big Dipper has a secret, invisible to the unaided eye, according to a new paper published in The Astrophysical Journal, which says that one of the stars that makes the bend in the ladle's handle, Alcor, has a smaller red dwarf companion.

Newly discovered Alcor B orbits its larger sibling and was caught in the act with an innovative technique called "common parallactic motion" by members of Project 1640, an international collaborative team that includes astrophysicists at the American Museum of Natural History, the University of Cambridge's Institute of Astronomy, the California Institute of Technology, and
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The holidays are challenging for most everyone's midsection but are they a factor in actual obesity rather than seasonal weight gain?   And are weekends just as detrimental?

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and Quinnipiac University say yes to both.  Even weekend eating patterns can have a significant impact.

J. Jeffrey Inman, a University of Pittsburgh professor of marketing and associate dean for research in the Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business, and coauthor Adwait Khare, Quinnipiac University professor of marketing, studied two years' worth of data on consumers' eating behavior and found that the quantity and quality of foods eaten during a meal and over the course of the day differs considerably on weekends and holidays.

AIDS researchers have for the first time demonstrated that human blood stem cells can be engineered into cells that can target and kill HIV-infected cells — a process that potentially could be used against a range of chronic viral diseases. The study, published today in PLoS ONE, demonstrates that human stem cells can be engineered into the equivalent of a genetic vaccine.

By Taking CD8 cytotoxic T lymphocytes — the "killer" T cells that help fight infection — from an HIV-infected individual, the researchers identified the molecule known as the T-cell receptor, which guides the T cell in recognizing and killing HIV-infected cells.

A political scientist from the University of Alberta has uncovered a dastardly ploy by the producers of Thomas and Friends, a popular children's TV show, to turn their innocent audience of youngsters into  socially intolerant conservatives. 

After analyzing 23 episodes of Thomas and Friends, a show about a train, his friends and their adventures on a fictional island, political scientist Shauna Wilton was able to identify themes that she believes are incompatible with the egalitarian world society her and her social scientist friends are planning for our children.