According to new research in the Journal of Consumer Research, simply asking people a question about whether they're willing to volunteer their time leads to increases in donations of both time and money.

The researchers conducted three separate studies, which yielded similar results. In the first study, participants completed an online survey and then read a statement about lung cancer and the American Lung Cancer Foundation's mission. Half of the participants were asked how much time they would like to donate to the foundation and half were not asked. Then all were asked how much money they would donate to the foundation. The participants who were asked to donate time eventually pledged more than those who weren't asked: $36.44 versus $24.46.

Biologists and biochemists are now able to access 3-D images of biomacromolecules underlying biological functions and disease, thanks to a collaborative website called Proteopedia which provides a new resource by linking written information and three-dimensional structural information.

Rather than relying just on text to provide the understanding of biomacromolecule structures, this wiki web resource, first described in Genome Biology, displays protein structures and other biomacromolecules in interactive format. These interactive images are surrounded by descriptive text containing hyperlinks that change the appearance (such as view, representations, colors or labels) of the adjacent 3D structure to reflect the concept explained in the text.

This makes the complex structural information readily accessible and comprehensible, even to people who are not structural biologists.

We don't need to 'frame' science for the masses, no matter what you may read elsewhere by people who want to manipulate data to achieve their ideological goals.

Informed people who make their own decisions(whether they agree with you or not) and then participate improves the overall quality of federal agencies' decisions about the environment, says a new report from the National Research Council.

More importantly, public involvement increases the legitimacy of decisions in the eyes of those affected by them, which makes it more likely that the decisions will be implemented effectively - something heavy-handed mandates can never accomplish. Agencies should recognize public participation as valuable to their objectives, not just as a formality required by the law, the report says. It details principles and approaches agencies can use to successfully involve the public.

The vegetative neural system adjusts life functions of all organs. Developmentally old, has narrow relations with the mental sphere of the affective and instinctive. 1913 years LERICHE recommend a periarterial sympathectomy at peripheral disturbances of profusions. JONNESCO 1916 carried out successfully sympathectomy of the cervical truncus sympathicus at an angina pectoris. HUNTER and ROYLE 1924 years cut ramie communicants, revealing one of the most important indications of the surgery of sympathicus – removal of spasms of arteries. WHITE 1936 introduced preganglionic cutting, whose advantages still 1929 had noticed FOERSTER (Bratislava). For further development of the surgery of sympathicus were especially meritorious PEET and SMITHWICK.

What we see can sometimes depend as much on our ears as on our eyes, according to research led by Dr Elliot Freeman, lecturer in psychology at Brunel University’s School of Social Sciences and published this week in Current Biology.

The study revealed that the perceived direction of motion from a given visual object (in this case, red bars across a screen), depends on minute variations in the timing of an accompanying sound (a sequence of beeps, for example). This provides evidence that the brain’s integration of these visual and audio cues occurs at a very early stage of processing.

It’s almost as if the grape varietal known in the U.S. as Isabella is being hidden, protected, or that the E.U. ban on Fragolino, made from Isabella grapes, is a hint that this North American grape said to have transported the phylloxera to Europe in the early 1800’s, is cursed.

Also known in over 50 aliases including Raisin De Cassis, Fragola, Framboisier, Alexander and Black Cape, it is many times mistaken in Italy for the Clinton grape for a variety of reasons, most importantly having to do with its strawberry oriented taste and immunity to the grape killing pest phylloxera.

All Native American vitis labrusca species are immune to the pale yellow phylloxera insects. The dark purple skinned Isabella grape, necessary in the creation of Fragolino wine, was born out of its cross with an unknown European vitis vinifera. It has a powerful strawberry taste, hence its name Fragolino—fragole meaning strawberry in Italian.

If you were a young-ish science student in the mid-1980s there are two movies that remain in your collection to this day; Back To The Future and, of course, Buckaroo Banzai: Across The Eighth Dimension.

'Buckaroo Banzai' was completely inplausible - even I can't be a rock star, neurosurgeon and world class physicist. Well, maybe I can, but you can't and even I don't have my own video game and comic book like he does.

So for actual science discussions, Back To The Future remains the default movie of the period. Like Yahoo Serious in "Young Einstein", Marty ends up doing some science (in Marty's case by accident) but also invents rock and roll. Rock and roll shows up a lot in science movies. This is because music is math and math was created to give scientists something to do while sleeping.

A predisposition to adult snoring can be established very early in life, according to research published today in Respiratory Research. The study describes possible childhood risk factors, including exposure to animals, early respiratory or ear infections and even growing up in a large family.

Karl A Franklin from University Hospital Umeå, Sweden, and a team of Nordic researchers questioned more than sixteen thousand randomly selected people from Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Denmark and Estonia about their childhood and their snoring habits. According to Franklin “A total of 15,556 subjects answered the questions on snoring. Habitual snoring, defined as loud and disturbing snoring at least three nights a week, was reported by 18%.”

Risk factors related to snoring:

An international study of the effects of Hormone Replacement Therapy(HRT) use on quality of life has shown that HRT use can significantly improve wellbeing in women with menopausal symptoms such as hot flushes and night sweats.

This study looked at health-related quality of life in 5692 health women aged 50-69 in the UK, Australia and New Zealand.

The International Menopause Society notes that the study found that about 3 out of 4 women who complained of night sweats and hot flushes, found that these symptoms had vanished after a year of HRT use. Even in women who were well past menopause and did not suffer hot flushes, there was a noted improvement in sleep, sexuality and joint pain as a result of HRT use.

ScientificBlogger Matthew Brown had the chance to sit down with Dr. Kathryn Flanagan, the head of the Mission Office for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to talk about her NASA missions, her public service, and why it’s normal even for an astrophysicist to have self-doubt.

"When the moment comes when you’re absolutely desperate, and you’re pretty sure you’re never going to be able to do what you’ve always wanted to do, don't worry—you’re right on schedule."

The MIT-educated astrophysicist is helping to explore some of science’s deepest wonders: how the universe came into being, whether there is life on other planets, and the origins of humankind. She’s doing it with technology that's challenging even the previous limits of explorations into space and time, and she’s doing it all with a tangible excitement, a genuine humility, and an altruistic spirit. Dr. Kathy Flanagan, head of the Mission Office for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The JWST, scheduled for launch in 2013, will study everything from the first galaxies formed by the Big Bang, to the formation of other solar systems capable of supporting life.