It is somewhat surreal to see the discovery of the largest prime number paraded on prime time broadcast media. Mathematicians around the world are asked to explain the significance of this discovery in layman’s terms, which is up there with physicists trying to explain what the Large Hadron Collider actually does.

Below you’ll see a pretty sparky Sky News interview by Eugenia Cheng, a senior lecturer at the University of Sheffield. Just notice at the very end how jolly pleased with themselves the newscasters seem to be.

Genome sequences of seven well-studied ant species give researchers a detailed look at molecular mechanisms - including what may be a basis for complex behavioral differences in two worker castes in the Florida carpenter ant, Camponotus floridanus - basically, epigenetics. 

Which is more important, feeling close to your romantic partner or whether you are as close as you want to be, even if that's really not close at all? 

Outside the social sciences, the answer is obvious. But in social psychology, it is a paper in time for Valentine's Day. Let's go to the surveys.

New data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory suggest a highly distorted supernova remnant  called W49B may contain the most recent black hole formed in the Milky Way galaxy.

W49B
appears to be the product of a rare explosion in which matter is ejected at high speeds along the poles of a rotating star and is about a thousand years old (as seen from Earth) and is located about 26,000 light-years away. 

Usually when a massive star runs out of fuel, the central region of the star collapses, triggering a chain of events that quickly culminate in a supernova explosion. Most of these explosions are generally symmetrical, with the stellar material blasting away more or less evenly in all directions.

Here's a good way to standardize education across the states without enraging powerful education unions and the US Department of Education: get rid of real standards.

In a bit of pedagogical brilliance, California has decided to forgo algebra I, even for 8th graders, if they are not 'ready'.  And it will work, because with President Obama's killing of No Child Left Behind, despite its proven benefits in minority education and bringing parity to female math students for the first time in history, test scores (which determine money) will be based on an 'alternative' test that doesn't use algebra.

It’s curious, all the press attention lavished on this recent article¹ in Jour. Evolutionary Biology.

Noting the differing proportions of human hands versus those of other primates, Michael Morgan and David Carrier of the University of Utah concluded human hands are better suited for making fists. They wondered whether this confers an evolutionary advantage.

In a recent JAMA article,
2008 National Survey of Mental Health Treatment Facilities
data of psychiatric hospitals, residential treatment centers and freestanding outpatient clinics or partial-care and multiservice mental health groups found that only 63 percent of U.S. counties have at least one mental health facility that provides outpatient treatment for youth. 

Less than half of U.S. counties have a mental health facility with special programs for youth with severe emotional disturbance. The gaps in infrastructure are even larger in rural communities, where less than half even have one mental health facility that provides outpatient care and only one-third has outpatient facilities with specific programs for youth with severe illness. 

When is it time for parents to help and when it is time to back away?

Since kids were having children of their own at age 18 a century ago it seems obvious that hovering over college-age students is not needed.  And a new paper in Journal of Child and Family Studies
 says that college students with over-controlling parents are more likely to be depressed and less satisfied with their lives. This so-called helicopter parenting style negatively affects students' well-being by violating their need to feel both autonomous and competent.

"GMO Inside" is demanding that America's largest candy sellers, Hershey's and Mars, put GMO warning labels on their Valentine's Day candy or remove these 'risky' ingredients completely.

Wait, they make GMO chocolate now? No, of course not, though there is nothing natural about chocolate anyway.  A lot of corn and soy is genetically modified and those are in chocolate products. Science has made wonderful progress in bringing safe food at reasonable cost to billions more people than was once thought possible and cheap Valentine's Day candy when chocolate was once reserved for nobility is testament to that.