The motion, formation, and recycling of Earth’s crust—commonly known as plate tectonics—have long been thought to be continuous processes but new research by geophysicists suggests that plate tectonic motions have occasionally stopped in Earth’s geologic history, and may do so again.

The findings could reshape our understanding of the history and evolution of the Earth’s crust and continents.

Synthesizing a wide range of observations and constructing a new theoretical model, researchers Paul Silver of the Carnegie Institution of Washington and Mark Behn of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) have found evidence that the process of subduction has effectively stopped at least once in Earth’s past.

If you’re worried about high cholesterol levels and keeping heart-healthy as you get older, don’t push aside bacon and eggs just yet. A new study says they might actually provide a benefit.

Researchers at Texas A&M University have discovered that lower cholesterol levels can actually reduce muscle gain with exercising. Lead investigator Steven Riechman, assistant professor of health and kinesiology, and Simon Sheather, head of the Department of Statistics, along with colleagues from The Johns Hopkins Weight Management Center and the Northern Ontario School of Medicine, have recently had their findings published in the Journal of Gerontology.

Bottom line: Before you have that second helping of oatmeal, it’s very possible that cholesterol may not be the mean Mr.

LONDON, January 10 /PRNewswire/ --

Millions of Brits could be playing Russian Roulette with their health buying prescription-only medicines from rogue internet sites, according to research conducted by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain (RPSGB).

In response to this growing online danger, the RPSGB today rolls out the Internet Pharmacy Logo, a visual tool to help the public identify if a website is being operated by a bona fide pharmacy in Britain.

Hundreds of millions — or even billions — of years after planets would have initially formed around two unusual stars, a second wave of planetesimal and planet formation appears to be taking place, UCLA astronomers and colleagues believe.

"This is a new class of stars, ones that display conditions now ripe for formation of a second generation of planets, long, long after the stars themselves formed," said UCLA astronomy graduate student Carl Melis, who reported the findings today at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Austin, Texas.

One of the roadblocks for electric motor technology is that as operating temperatures go up, the magnets in the motors get weaker, resulting in a drop in power. Ames Laboratory Researcher Iver Anderson and his team have developed a new magnetic alloy that maintains its strong magnetic properties even at high operating temperatures approaching 400 degrees F.

The Ames Lab senior metallurgist and Iowa State University adjunct professor of materials science and engineering is playing a major role in advancing electric drive motor technology to meet the enormous swell in consumer demand expected over the next five years.

Fungi don't exactly come in boy and girl varieties, but they do have sex differences. In fact, a new finding from Duke University Medical Center shows that some of the earliest evolved forms of fungus contain clues to how the sexes evolved in higher animals, including that distant cousin of fungus, the human.

A team lead by Joseph Heitman, M.D. has isolated sex-determining genes from one of the oldest known types of fungi, Phycomyces blakesleeanus, findings which appear in the Jan. 10 issue of Nature.

Fungi do not have entire sex chromosomes, like the familiar X and Y chromosomes that determine sexual identity in humans. Instead, they have sex determining sequences of DNA called "mating-type loci."

Mitch Waldrop has written an informative piece on the Science 2.0 movement in Scientific American:



Science 2.0: Great New Tool, or Great Risk?



Consistent with the content of the article, Mitch invites feedback:

Welcome to a Scientific American experiment in "networked journalism," in which readers—you—get to collaborate with the author to give a story its final form.

Discovery of an exceptional fossil specimen in southeastern Morocco that preserves evidence of the animal’s soft tissues has solved a paleontological puzzle about the origins of an extinct group of bizarre slug-like animals with rows of mineralized armor plates on their backs, according to a paper in Nature.

While evolution has produced great diversity in the body designs of animals, over the course of history several highly distinct groups, such as trilobites and ammonites, have become extinct. The new fossil is of an unusual creature known as a machaeridian, an invertebrate, or animal without a backbone, that existed for about 180 million years from 485 to 305 million years ago.

Methadone is a possible cause of sudden cardiac death even when it isn’t overdosed but is taken at therapeutic levels primarily for relief of chronic pain or drug addiction withdrawal, a new study by Oregon Health & Science University researchers suggests.

The study’s findings, described in the January 2008 issue of The American Journal of Medicine, are based on an evaluation of all sudden cardiac deaths in the greater Portland, Ore., metropolitan area between 2002 and 2006 where detailed autopsies were performed.

The analysis was based on a comparison of two case groups. One group consisted of 22 sudden cardiac deaths in which toxicology screens turned up 1 milligram or less of methadone — defined as a therapeutic level.

As Americans increasingly seek a “quick fix” to physical and mental ailments, psychoanalysts can be caught in the crossfire of a debate about the potential benefits and drawbacks of including medication in their treatment plans.

A panel discussion entitled “The Uses of Medications in Psychoanalysis: What We Know; What is Uncertain,” will be led by internationally renowned psychoanalyst Glen O. Gabbard, M.D., at the American Psychoanalytic Association’s 2008 Winter Meeting on Friday, January 18, 2008, from 2-5 p.m. at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York.

Taking the position for a cautious approach to the inclusion of medications in analysis will be Stephen D. Purcell, M.D. Adele Tutter, M.D., Ph.D., is more optimistic about the inclusion of medications in treatment.