The public looks up to scientists but scientists tend to look down on the public; and science journalism gets a lot of the blame.  So say the findings of a new report by the Pew Research Center for the People&the Press which finds that overwhelming majorities of Americans believe that science has had a positive effect on society and that science has made life easier for most people. The public - even those skeptical of climate change and evolution - rates scientists highly and believes government investments in science pay off in the long term. 

A clinical report in the current edition of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International supports the belief that the designer drug “Spice Gold” is strongly addictive.   Ulrich S. Zimmermann from Dresden Technical University and colleagues describe a young man who developed physical withdrawal symptoms after regular consumption, accompanied by a dependence syndrome.

Since January 2009, “Spice Gold” has been subject to the German Narcotics Law, meaning that production, free trade and possession are forbidden, but initially only for a year. There could be a permanent regulation at the end of that time and more information about “Spice Gold” is currently being collected.

A team of astrophysicists say they have solved a mystery that led some scientists to speculate that the distribution of certain gamma rays in our Milky Way galaxy was evidence for undetectable 'dark matter' making up much of the mass of the universe.

In two papers, the astrophysicists instead say that this distribution of gamma rays can be explained by the way "antimatter positrons" from the radioactive decay of elements, created by massive star explosions in the galaxy, propagate through the galaxy. Thus, they say, the observed distribution of gamma rays is not evidence for dark matter.

Johann Galle fans won't like reading this but professor David Jamieson, Head of the School of Physics at the University of Melbourne, says Galileo beat him to the punch in the discovery of Neptune - by 234 years.

If correct, the discovery would be the first new planet identified by humanity since deep antiquity.

Twitter, the newest social networking sensation, can generate sales leads for your business faster than other social network, even with a slashed budget, says David White, Founder and Chief Executive of Weboptimiser and he says he can tell you how your company can benefit from it when he presents his webinars in July.   He says Twitter is generating up to half the hits on his company’s website.

Nothing makes biologists happier than psychologists declaring things a product of evolution.   Now it turns out even social constructs like 'taking turns' have gotten some benefit from evolutions' 'invisible hand'.

How so?   It spans across species so it must be evolution, say University of Leicester psychologists professor Andrew Colman and Dr Lindsay Browning, who carried out the simulations due to appear in the September issue of Evolutionary Ecology Research which they say helps explain the evolution of cooperative turn-taking.