While driving to my doctor's office to get some persistent Toxicodendron diversilobum (that's poison oak) looked at, I listened to NPR. Just as you would expect of me, my radio stations will all have buttons for NPR, country music, whatever station carries Rush Limbaugh, and a variety of others. On NPR I was intrigued because the guest chef was preparing a meal for alternative Thanksgiving lifestyles, that being vegan and gluten-free.

Methane has 30 times the warming effect of carbon dioxide but lacks the press awareness of its greenhouse gas cousin. 

And a new study in
Nature Geoscience has found that the seafloor off the coast of Northern Siberia is releasing more than twice the amount of methane as previously estimated - the East Siberian Arctic Shelf is venting at least 17  million tons
(teragrams) of methane into the atmosphere each year. 

Can you artificially strengthen a marital bond? 

Scientists at the Bonn University Medical Center found that if oxytocin is administered to men and if they are shown pictures of their partner, the bonding hormone stimulates the reward center in the brain, increass the attractiveness of the partner, and strengthens monogamy. 

Using chest pain characteristics (CPCs) specific to women in the early diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction (AMI, heart attack) in the emergency department does not seem to be supported by the findings of a new study.

While about 90 percent of patients with AMI present with chest pain or discomfort, some patients present without typical chest pain. Sex-specific differences in symptom presentation among women have received increasing attention. But it remains unclear whether identifying sex-specific CPCs is possible to help physicians differentiate women with AMI from women with other causes of chest pain, the authors write in the study background.

Retroviruses are important pathogens capable of crossing species barriers to infect new hosts, but knowledge of their evolutionary history is limited. By mapping endogenous retroviruses (ERVs), retroviruses whose genes have become part of the host organism's genome, researchers at Uppsala University, Sweden, can now provide unique insights into the evolutionary relationships of retroviruses and their host species.

Some older chemistry sets included a conductivity tester to demonstrate the conductivity of materials and liquids. If you wish to include Snap Circuits in your Science Play and Research Kit you can use a simple circuit designed with the 555 timer IC incorporated into the circuit to test conductivity. For an introduction to the 555 timer IC and snap circuits, please review this article.

Parts Needed:

1 555 Timer IC
2 Clothespins
1 250 ml beaker

Snap Circuits Parts:

Archaeologists working in Nepal have uncovered evidence of a structure at the birthplace of the Buddha dating to the sixth century B.C., the first archaeological material linking the life of the Buddha and the movement he founded to a specific century.

The Maya Devi Temple at Lumbini, Nepal, has long been considered the birthplace of the Buddha and now excavations have uncovered the remains of a previously unknown sixth-century B.C. timber structure under a series of brick temples. Laid out on the same design as those above it, the timber structure contains an open space in the center that links to the nativity story of the Buddha himself. 

Playing violent video games not only increases aggression, it also leads to less self-control and more cheating, according to  a paper in Social Psychological and Personality Science.

The psychologists found that teens who played violent video games ate more chocolate and were more likely to steal raffle tickets in a lab experiment than were teens who played nonviolent games. The effects were strongest in those who scored high on a measure of moral disengagement – the ability to convince yourself that ethical standards don't apply to you in a particular situation. 

Global warming was set in motion around 1600 AD, it seems. 

Because carbon dioxide emissions persist for a long time, even a sudden halt today means the carbon dioxide already in Earth's atmosphere could continue to warm our planet for hundreds of years, according to a numerical model which suggests that it might take a lot less carbon than previously thought to reach the global temperature scientists deem unsafe.

Awe-inspiring moments, like the sight of the Grand Canyon or the Aurora Borealis, might increase our tendency to believe in God and the supernatural, according to a new paper in Psychological Science which suggests that awe-inspiring sights increase our motivation to make sense of the world around us. Learning geology may be too hard to it's easier to default to aliens or religion.