After extracting ancient DNA from the 40,000-year-old bones of Neanderthals, scientists have obtained a draft sequence of the Neanderthal genome. The effort revealed evidence that shortly after early modern humans migrated out of Africa, some of them interbred with Neanderthals, leaving bits of Neanderthal DNA sequences scattered through the genomes of present-day non-Africans.

"We can now say that, in all probability, there was gene flow from Neanderthals to modern humans," said the paper's first author, Richard E. (Ed) Green of the University of California, Santa Cruz.

The results of the study appear this week in Science.

Following a drop in public confidence in climate scientists as a result of the 'Climategate' emails, two hundred fifty-five members of the National Academy of Sciences have joined together to defend the rigor and objectivity of climate science.

Their signed statement, appearing  tomorrow in Science, explains the scientific research process and confirms the fundamental conclusions about climate change based on the work of thousands of scientists worldwide.

A new study in the Journal of Consumer Research has found that shoppers often expect to buy a certain number of unplanned items, and most have a fairly accurate estimate as to how much they will spend on them. The authors use the term "in-store slack" to describe the room shoppers leave in their budget for unplanned purchases.

The researchers conducted a field study at several grocery stores in Texas. Shoppers were asked what they intended to purchase, how much they expected to spend on the planned items, and how much they intended to spend total. After shopping, participants provided their receipts and answered questions about themselves and their purchases. More than 75 percent of the participants included room in their mental budgets for unplanned purchases.

Washing your hands can cleanse you of past immoral behavior, it can also eliminate traces of buyer's remorse by reducing the need to justify past decisions, say psychologist writing in Science.

"It's not just that washing your hands contributes to moral cleanliness as well as physical cleanliness, as seen in earlier research" said U-M psychologists Spike W. S.. "Our studies show that washing also reduces the influence of past behaviors and decisions that have no moral implications whatsoever."

The ESA's Herschel infrared space observatory is capturing new images from thousands of distant galaxies as they furiously build stars and beautiful star-forming clouds. The photographic evidence reveals previously hidden details and challenges old ideas about of star formation.

The new findings were presented today during a major scientific symposium held at the European Space Agency (ESA).

Previous research has suggested that the best approach to significant weight loss is a slow and steady one. But a new study in the International Journal of Behavioral Medicine indicates that the key to long-term weight loss and maintenance is rapid weight loss in the initial stages of obesity treatment.

Successful weight loss in obese individuals is defined as a reduction of 10 percent or more of initial body weight maintained for at least a year. The jury is still out, however, as to whether fast or slow initial weight loss is the best approach for long-term weight control in obese patients.

Teenage girls are more willing than boys to communicate with their parents when it comes to talking about most dating issues, and both sexes generally prefer to talk to their mothers, according to a new study in the Journal of Adolescence.

The new study also found, however, that girls and boys are equally close-mouthed about issues involving sex and what they do with their dates while unsupervised. And in this case, teens were no more eager to talk to their mothers than they were their fathers. Results showed that the amount of information parents hear from their teenagers about dating depend on a variety of matters, including age, gender, and what aspect of dating the topic involves.

Two new studies conducted by scientists at Emory University have found that simple peptides can organize into bi-layer membranes. The finding suggests a "missing link" between the pre-biotic Earth's chemical inventory and the organizational scaffolding essential to life.

"We've shown that peptides can form the kind of membranes needed to create long-range order," says chemistry graduate student Seth Childers. "What's also interesting is that these peptide membranes may have the potential to function in a complex way, like a protein."

The results were recently published in Angwandte Chemie.


Photo Credit: Emory University)

A compound in dark chocolate called epicatechin may protect the brain after a stroke by increasing cellular signals already known to shield nerve cells from damage.

After inducing an ischemic stroke in mice, John Hopkins scientists found that mice who had been fed a single modest dose of epicatechin suffered significantly less brain damage than the ones that had not been given the compound.

The study was recently published in the Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism.

University of Sheffield geographers studying flowering plants say summers in England have been arriving earlier since the 1950s.

Researchers examined records of the first blooming date of early summer flowering plants (phenology) and the timing of first occurrences of warm 'summer' temperatures - events linked with the onset of summer.

Results revealed that the occurrence of 'summer' temperatures has advanced by 11 days in the 1990s compared to the period 1954-1963, while early summer flowering has advanced by three days. If this analysis is extended to 2007, the advance reaches 18 days.