The potentially damaging effects of marijuana on young brains may be even worse than previously thought, according to new research conducted by scientists from McGill University. Their new study, published in Neurobiology of Disease, suggests that teenagers who consume marijuana daily face a higher risk of depression and anxiety, and may suffer irreversible neurological effects.

"We wanted to know what happens in the brains of teenagers when they use cannabis and whether they are more susceptible to its neurological effects than adults," explained McGill University researcher Gabriella Gobbi.

New images from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory show that the symmetry of supernova remnants, or lack thereof, reveal how the original stars exploded. Astronomers say the discovery is important because it will help them better classify supernovas that exploded hundreds or thousands of years ago. The discovery is reported in a new Astrophysical Journal Letters study.

Astronomers sort supernovas into several categories, or "types", based on properties observed days after the explosion and which reflect very different physical mechanisms that cause stars to explode.  But, since observed remnants of supernovas are leftover from explosions that
occurred long ago, other methods are needed to accurately classify the original supernovas.

In the Dec. 18 issue of Science, Researchers from Tufts University say popular television programs are spreading racial messages to their viewers through biased facial expressions and body language, and it's happening without the audience even knowing it.

The Tufts team studied the prevalence, subtlety and impact of nonverbal race bias in 11 popular weekly scripted television shows. They found that characters on the shows exhibited more negative nonverbal behavior toward black characters than to white characters of the same status. Exposure to "pro-white" (vs. "pro-black") nonverbal bias also increased viewers' race bias, as assessed with reaction-time and self-report measures.

Scientists have recorded the deepest erupting volcano yet discovered--West Mata Volcano--located 4,000 feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, in an area bounded by Fiji,Tonga and Samoa.

The imagery includes large molten lava bubbles three feet across bursting into cold seawater, glowing red vents exploding lava into the sea, and the first-observed advance of lava flows across the deep-ocean floor. Sounds of the eruption were recorded by a hydrophone and later matched with the video footage.

The signature of large missing energy and jets is arguably one of the most important avenues for the study of potential new physics signatures at today's hadron colliders.

The above concept marks an interesting turn of events: the years of the glorification of charged leptons as the single most important tools for the discovery of rare production processes appears behind us. The W and Z discovery in 1983 by UA1 at CERN, or the top quark discovery by CDF and DZERO in 1995 at Fermilab, would have been impossible without the precise and clean detection of electrons and muons. However, with time we have understood that missing energy may be a more powerful tool for new discoveries.

Tuesday began as a day like any other.   Rolled out of bed at 10AM, read some awesome science  blogging (here, where else?) over coffee, then went to the office where I was looking forward to a round of golf and a nap before playing some X-box before going home.

I arrived at the office and remembered I hadn't eaten breakfast; golf would have to wait.  "Hey Bloggy," I said, "want to go to Mels?  It's biscuit and honey day."

No answer.  I looked over at where Bloggy would usually be boring into me with his wee beady eyes, making sure work gets done, but it was empty.   Instead there was just a note.  It read:

Last week I talked about some H1N1 numbers from the CDC. The numbers I highlighted were by and large from either the CDC's focused surveillance sites, or based on reports voluntarily submitted by various hospitals, providers, etc.  Carl Zimmer has highlighted the CDC's effort to estimate the big picture - total infections, hospitalizations, and deaths nationwide. At this point, the CDC says there has been no seasonal flu - almost all flu cases have been H1N1.

While trying to develop a vaccine for AIDS, researchers have uncovered a biological catch-22 that's been hindering their chances of success. They say that while the immune system can produce cells with the potential to manufacture HIV-blocking antibodies, it also works equally hard to eliminate those cells before they have a chance to mature.

Over the years, scientists have assumed that B cells – one of the first lines of defense against infection – are simply not able to "see" the HIV virus. HIV has the ability to hide its most vulnerable parts from immune system surveillance, and researchers generally assumed that
helped explain why B cells often took weeks and even months to arise following infection.

Many studies have shown, and common sense dictates, that good looks greatly benefit those who have them. Prettier people tend to have more social relationships, and reap the psychological benefits as a result. What may not be so widely known, however, is that the relevance of physical appearance varies based on geography.

According to a study published in Personal Relationships, The importance of attractiveness depends on the social environment where we live. Attractiveness does matter in more socially mobile, urban areas (and from a woman's point of view actually indicates psychological well-being), but it is far less relevant in rural areas.

Analysis of microfossils found in ocean sediment cores is illuminating the environmental conditions that prevailed at high latitudes during a critical period of Earth history.

Around 55 million years ago at the beginning of the Eocene epoch, the Earth's poles are believed to have been free of ice. But by the early Oligocene around 25 million years later, ice sheets covered Antarctica and continental ice had developed on Greenland.