the Earth's natural biogeochemical cycles must be better understood before Geoengineering efforts are undertaken as a means to help mitigate climate change, according to two studies in Nature Geoscience which discuss what drove large-scale changes to the carbon cycle nearly 100 million years ago.

Both research teams conclude that a massive amount of volcanic activity introduced carbon dioxide and sulfur into the atmosphere, which in turn had a significant impact on the carbon cycle, oxygen levels in the oceans and marine plants and animals.

 A high-fat, low-carb diet used to control multiple, daily and severe seizures in current and former patients is not only effective, but  also appears to have no long-lasting side effects, say scientists at Johns Hopkins Children's Center. The findings are detailed online in Epilepsia.

There's a reason attractive human faces are used to market just about everything consumers purchase today – when people see pretty faces, their brains begin computing how much the experience is worth. New brain-imaging research shows it's even possible to predict how much people might be willing to pay to see a particular face. Scientists say the findings may allow them to predict future purchases of different market segments.

Researchers at Duke University Medical Center found that as participants were watching a sequence of faces, their brains were simultaneously evaluating those faces in two distinct ways: for the quality of the viewing experience and for what they would trade to see the face again.

New images from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope showing where supernova remnants emit radiation a billion times more energetic than visible light have brought astronomers a step closer to understanding the source of cosmic rays.

Cosmic rays consist mainly of protons that move through space at nearly the speed of light. In their journey across the galaxy, the particles are deflected by magnetic fields, which scrambles their paths and masks their origins.

Subtropical waters are reaching Greenland's glaciers and likely triggering an acceleration of ice loss, reports a team of researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and the University of Maine.

"This is the first time we've seen waters this warm in any of the fjords in Greenland," says Fiamma Straneo, a physical oceanographer from the WHOI. "The subtropical waters are flowing through the fjord very quickly, so they can transport heat and drive melting at the end of the glacier."

While melting due to warming air temperatures is a known event, scientists are just beginning to learn more about the ocean's impact — in particular, the influence of currents — on the ice sheet.

Biologists have struggled for many years to comprehend the relationships among the major groups of arthropods. Now, a team of researchers has completed new analysis of the evolutionary relationships among arthropods, which may answer many questions that defied previous attempts to unravel how these creatures were connected. The study will appear in Nature later this month.