Overall alcohol use—particularly consumption of beer—is declining in the US, according to a new study published in the August 2008 issue of The American Journal of Medicine. Researchers examined 50 years of data and found several changes in alcohol intake but no change in alcohol use disorders.

Americans are drinking significantly less beer and more wine, while hard liquor use has remained fairly constant. More people now report that they are non-drinkers. People born later in the 20th century drink more moderately than older people. As we age, our individual alcohol consumption goes down.

Did you know that Norwegian trees require only a few minutes to replace the timber used to produce the first edition of Aftenposten - equivalent to the time we spend making our morning coffee.

Norway is full of forests and the trees are growing. With just one-third of the growth logged, there is plenty of growth each year. In fact, since sheep and other domestic animals no longer graze the scrub, the landscape is actually starting to be overgrown.

Meanwhile, paper production is less and less profitable, hurting the forestry industry. But that won't last, say a group of experts. In fact, the value of Norwegian wood is going to go up.

The reason, they say, is second generation biodiesel and bioethanol. First generation production of fuel from rapeseed(Brassica napus) and maize has faced strong criticism. Producing fuel on valuable topsoil in the face of greater worldwide food demand is unpopular.

But as much criticism as biofuels have taken, there is no question the world has huge areas that can be better utilized, and timber from agriculture and forestry can produce more useful growth.

Mimmi Throne-Holst, research scientist at SINTEF in Norway, is one of those who believe that Norwegian forests can provide the fuels of the future and that Norway should prioritize this because of considerable experience with bio refinery (Borregaard, Norske Skog) and large-scale production.

A 'cloud computing', applications and services provided seamlessly on the Internet, approach to malicious software detection developed at the University of Michigan could make old antivirus software techniques a relic of the past.

Traditional antivirus software is installed on millions of individual computers around the world but according to researchers, antivirus software from popular vendors is increasingly ineffective.

Yesterday, newspapers were telling us half of apes and monkeys face extinction and today we find out we could be overwhelmed by them.

The Wildlife Conservation Society released a census showing massive numbers of these great apes alive and well in the Republic of Congo.

Western lowland gorillas are one of four recognized gorilla sub-species, which also include mountain gorillas, eastern lowland gorillas, and Cross River gorillas. All are classified as "critically endangered" by the IUCN, except eastern lowland gorillas, which are endangered.

When Yale astrophysicist Kevin Schawinski and colleagues at Oxford University enlisted public support in cataloguing galaxies, they never envisioned the strange object Hanny van Arkel found in archived images of the night sky.

The Dutch school teacher, a volunteer in the Galaxy Zoo project that allows members of the public to take part in astronomy research online, discovered a mysterious and unique object some observers are calling a "cosmic ghost."

When van Arkel posted about the image that quickly became known as "Hanny's Voorwerp" ( Dutch for "object") on the Galaxy Zoo forum, astronomers who run the site began to investigate and soon realized van Arkel might have found a new class of astronomical object.

A new Carnegie Mellon University brain imaging study of dyslexic students and other poor readers shows that the brain can permanently rewire itself and overcome reading deficits, if students are given 100 hours of intensive remedial instruction.

The study, published in the August issue of the journal Neuropsychologia, shows that the remedial instruction resulted in an increase in brain activity in several cortical regions associated with reading, and that neural gains became further solidified during the year following instruction.

"This study demonstrates how remedial instruction can use the plasticity of the human brain to gain an educational improvement," said neuroscientist Marcel Just, director of Carnegie Mellon's Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging (CCBI) and senior author of the study. "Focused instruction can help underperforming brain areas to increase their proficiency."