About a dozen teens with social-communication disorders sit in a tight circle, cradled in couches and chairs in a conference room at the UC Davis M.I.N.D. Institute. They listen intently as Marjorie Solomon, the leader of the Institute’s social skills training program, guides them in a discussion of what it means to have and be a friend.

“What makes you trust another person?” Solomon asks. “Do you make friends easily?  Do you pick friends who are similar to you?” she asks.

The answers spill out, sometimes freely, sometimes with more coaxing. “I trust other people when I know they can keep a secret,” one participant volunteers. “Someone who will help me out in a jam,” another says. “Someone who will stick by me over time,” offers another.

The Paleoindians who occupied North America throughout the Younger Dryas interval, which saw a rapid return to glacial conditions approximately 11,000 years ago, successfully dispersed across the continent's diverse habitats, according to a new study in the Journal of World Prehistory.  

Experts have generally assumed that cooling temperatures and their impact on communities posed significant adaptive challenges to Paleoindian groups.  But the new review of climatic and environmental records from this time period in continental North America suggests that the Young Dryas age cooling was not as sudden, extensive, or severe, and the notion that these conditions may have taken the Paleoindians by surprise is questionable.

the world's deepest undersea volcanic vents, known as 'black smokers' have been discovered in the Cayman Trough 3.1 Miles beneath the surface of the Caribbean Sea.

Using a remotely controlled, deep-diving vehicle, scientists uncovered slender spires made of copper and iron ores on the seafloor, erupting water hot enough to melt lead, nearly half a mile deeper than anyone has seen before.

Deep-sea vents are undersea springs where superheated water erupts from the ocean floor. They were first seen in the Pacific three decades ago, but most are found between one and two miles deep.

Newly drilled core samples from the Antarctic Peninsula may contain ice dating back into the last ice age and could give new insight into past global climate changes.

Oxygen-isotopic ratios – a proxy for temperature, and concentrations of dust and various chemicals – including volcanic tracers, will collectively reveal past climate conditions.

The expedition in early winter to the Bruce Plateau, an ice field straddling a narrow ridge on the northernmost tongue of the southernmost continent, yielded a core that was 445.6 meters (1,462 feet) long, the longest yet recovered from that region of Antarctica.

On top of the numerous functions our cell phones perform, the Department of Homeland Security says they may one day also protect us from toxic chemicals.

In the coming years, Homeland Security's Science and Technology Directorate (S&T)'s Cell-All aims to equip cell phones with a sensor capable of detecting deadly chemicals. A chip costing less than a dollar is embedded in a cell phone and programmed to either alert the cell phone carrier to the presence of toxic chemicals in the air, and/or a central station that can monitor how many alerts in an area are being received. One might be a false positive. Hundreds might indicate the need for evacuation.

A study published in Current Biology suggests that children with Williams Syndrome are not inherently racist like the rest of the population and may help experts develop interventions designed to reduce discriminatory attitudes towards minority groups.

Previous studies have shown that stereotypes are found ubiquitously in typically developing children—as early as age 3—as they are in adults, said Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg of the Central Institute of Mental Health, Mannheim/University of Heidelberg. Even children with autism display racial stereotypes, despite profound difficulties in daily social interaction and a general failure to show adapted social knowledge.

Nearly all life forms rely on the same genetic code to specify the amino acid composition of proteins, but just how individual amino acids were assigned to specific three-letter combinations or codons during the evolution of the genetic code is still subject to speculation.

Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies say that after only two waves of "matching" and some last minute fiddling, all 20 commonly used amino acids were firmly linked with their respective codons, setting the stage for the emergence of proteins with unique, defined sequences and properties.

Their findings provide the first in vivo data shedding light on the origin and evolution of the genetic code. The results are published in PNAS.

Despite media reports to the contrary, there is no evidence to support the assertion that smoking in cars is 23 times more toxic than in other indoor environments, say researchers writing in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ).

The authors say citing the inaccurate statistic has the potential to turn the public against efforts to ban smoking in automobiles. And If you're going to dictate to people how they should behave, not making things up is an important precursor.  

The CMAJ article describes how a local media report of an unsourced statistic — that "second-hand smoke was "23 times more toxic in a vehicle than in a home" — led to widespread reporting of the figure in international media and peer-reviewed literature.

Sociological theory has previously linked black urban decline to poverty,  loss of manufacturing jobs and racial segregation.

A new study in Social Forces claims another factor should be added into the dense cluster of black disadvantage – harsh immigration policies, which inadvertently flood low skill markets with Latino labor, displace blacks and, as a result, raise the rates of black murder.

So it looks like Humboldt squid don't kill divers after all. At least, they haven't done so yet.