Researchers at the University of Minnesota have created a molecular image of a system that moves electrons between proteins in cells. The achievement is a breakthrough for biology and could provide insights to minimize energy loss in other systems, from nanoscale devices to moving electricity around the country. The research was published this week in Science.

A new study in BioScience suggests that boosting use of maize-derived ethanol will increase greenhouse gas emissions and worsen the effects of climate change as a result.

The research focuses on how mandated increases in production of the biofuel in the United States will trigger land-use changes domestically and elsewhere. In response to the increased demand for maize, farmers convert additional land to crops, and this conversion can boost carbon dioxide emissions.

Several studies have shown that smokers have a lower risk of developing Parkinson's disease. But the relationship between risk for the disease and smoking may not be so simple. New research published in Neurology shows that smoking for a greater number of years may reduce the risk of the disease, but smoking a larger number of cigarettes per day made no difference.

The study involved 305,468 AARP members age 50 to 71 who completed a survey on diet and lifestyle at the time and again about 10 years later. During that time, 1,662 of the people had developed Parkinson's disease, or about one-half of one percent.

High school and college students who understand that the earth is 4.5 billion years old are much more likely to understand and accept human evolution, according to a survey published this month in Evolution.

The finding could give educators a new strategy for teaching evolution, since the Earth's age is typically covered in physical rather than biological science classes.

Researchers surveyed 400 students enrolled in several sections of a University of Minnesota introductory biology course for non-majors.

In order to learn how modern societies can adapt to the changes caused by global warming, scientists are working in the Arctic regions of St. James Bay, Quebec, northern Finland and Kamchatka to understand how humans living 4,000 to 6,000 years ago reacted to climate changes.

Their findings will tell governments, scientists and NGOs how relationships between human beings and their environments may change in decades to come as a result of global warming.

Some studies suggest that video gaming can improve vision and enhance information processing abilities. But that may be total nonsense, according to a study that examined the short-term effects of video-game ownership on academic development in young boys.

Adolescents who watch R-Rated movies are more likely to try alcohol at a young age, according to a study based on phone surveys of 6,255 10-14 year-old children.

Published in Prevention Science, the study examined the relationship between watching R-rated movies and the probability of alcohol use across different levels of "sensation seeking," which is a tendency to seek out risky experiences.

Sensation seeking was based on how individual subjects identified with statements like: "I like to do scary things, I like to do dangerous things, I often think there is nothing to do, and I like to listen to loud music."

The quality of entries in the world's largest open-access online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, depends on how authors collaborate, a study by University of Arizona researchers has found.

The research, they say, is the first to explain why some articles on the site are of much better quality than others.

Wikipedia has an internal quality rating system for entries, with featured articles at the top, followed by A, B, and C-level entries. The team randomly collected 400 articles at each quality level and applied a data provenance model they developed in an earlier paper.

Mother Earth Cycles To Work


Anthropogenic global warming.

AGW

Human-caused warming.

Call it what you will: is it real?

In short: can humans modify Earth's climate?

There are two major views on this question:

1 - human emissions of CO2 cause global warming.

2 - global warming is part of a natural cycle.


I suggest that neither view is sufficiently correct because the underlying suppositions and simplifications are false.

The Earth's dynamic systems are many.  They are complex in and of themselves.  They do not act in isolation, but interact amongst themselves.

Accordingly, one might ask:

Bad habits of ineffective science: Trends in Biochemical Sciences has a piece on Mental inertia in the biological sciences. I'm not quite sure what to make of it, but the piece does contain some interesting thoughts on hot topics vs. important topics:

Almost any scientist wants to work on solving an important problem, but at any given moment, it can be difficult to distinguish the topics that are ‘important’ from those that are ‘hot’. Often the scientific community does not immediately recognize the true significance of the work, and it can remain obscure for many years...