The Ordnance Survey (national mapping agency for the UK) has just released their first map of a region on another planet. It's a high resolution relief shaded contour map, and includes the area of Mars where ExoMars will land in 2018. Here is a close up view of it with the ESA landing ellipse in Oxia Planum superimposed. 

Preview of the full map - low resolution, again with landing ellipse.

Bilinguals use and learn language in ways that change their minds and brains, which has consequences -- many positive, according to Judith F. Kroll, a Penn State cognitive scientist.

"Recent studies reveal the remarkable ways in which bilingualism changes the brain networks that enable skilled cognition, support fluent language performance and facilitate new learning," said Kroll, Distinguished Professor, psychology, linguistics and women's studies.

Researchers have shown that the brain structures and networks of bilinguals are different from those of monolinguals. Among other things, the changes help bilinguals to speak in the intended language -- not to mistakenly speak in the "wrong" language.

Marijuana use is on the rise, with an estimated 12.5 percent of adults living in the United States reportedly using the drug at least once in 2013, according to a new study that looked at drug usage over the span of a decade.

But that research, from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, also shows that the rate of pot use did not double from 2002 to 2013 -- as had been reported in the fall -- and that the rate of problems related to the drug remained steady.

The Washington University researchers found that rather than doubling, the increase in marijuana use among adults was closer to 20 percent over the same time period and that problems related to using pot, such as addiction, remained steady or even declined.

From dot-matrix to 3-D, printing technology has come a long way in 40 years. But all of these technologies have created hues by using dye inks, which can be taxing on the environment. Now a team reports in ACS Nano the development of a colorless, non-toxic ink for use in inkjet printers. Instead of relying on dyes, the team exploits the nanostructure of this ink to create color on a page with inkjet printing.

Investigators at The Saban Research Institute of Children's Hospital Los Angeles have created a novel model for studying a lung disorder of newborn babies. Their study, published in PLOS ONE on February 10, describes the first model that allows investigators to consider the chronic effects of developmental lung disease.

MINNEAPOLIS - Poor physical fitness in middle age may be linked to a smaller brain size 20 years later, according to a study published in the February 10, 2016, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

"We found a direct correlation in our study between poor fitness and brain volume decades later, which indicates accelerated brain aging," said study author Nicole Spartano, PhD, with Boston University School of Medicine in Boston.

The human fingertip is a finely tuned sensory machine, and even slight touches convey a great deal of information about our physical environment. It turns out, some fish use their pectoral fins in pretty much the same way. And do so through a surprisingly similar biological mechanism to mammals -- humans included.

In a study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B on Feb. 10, 2016 University of Chicago scientists have shown for the first time that pectoral fins in at least one species of fish possess neurons and cells that are exquisitely sensitive to touch. The discovery not only sheds light on the evolutionary biology of touch, it might also someday inspire new advances in the design of underwater robotics.

The first law of thermodynamics is commonly known as the law of conservation of energy.  This means that in any process, no matter how big, small, long or short, the amount of energy of the system will always remain the same throughout time, it is a constant.  So if you run an engine, build a bridge, turn a turbine, boil a liquid or do anything else for that matter, the total energy before and after this (and all processes) will be the same.  You can only convert energy from

Dramatic videos created by environmental activists shows tap water being set on fire. In some cases, they were clear hoaxes, in others it turned out to be methane unrelated to drilling. Yet regardless, the belief is that natural gas fracturing (fracking), or conventional extraction, can reach drinking water. Scientists disagree, though conceding that anything can happen in the right circumstances, without it being indicative of the process.

Is a scientist someone who does science? It depends on who you ask, according to a presentation at the AAAS meeting in Washington, D.C.  A century ago, an occupation based on intelligence was regarded as a blue-collar endeavor. Sherlock Holmes was better than the police because he was an amateur detective, self-educated in science. Today, a large number of scientists, and certainly much of the public, thinks you are only a scientist if you are government funded.