The Earth's mantle, situated under the Earth's crust, is a key area for understanding geological processes but we only come into contact with Earth's circulating layers in the event of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. It's important to learn more about the characteristics of the Earth's mantle and these characteristics can be portrayed using seismic waves but the techniques used for this purpose still have various shortcomings. Dutch-sponsored research Ebru Bozdag demonstrated this during her doctoral research.

We do lots of things without thinking about it, like driving to work while we talk on the phone.   We have a kind of 'autopilot' that kicks in for things we have practiced and it allows us to do other things simultaneously.

For people with schizophrenia it's a little different. Dutch researcher Tamar van Raalten investigated whether a disruption to the automation process, learning by repetition to do something on automatic pilot, explains why people with schizophrenia can process less information. She established that it is not the automation process but the processing of new information that causes problems. 

Scientists at VIB, the Flanders Institute for Biotechnology, have successfully introduced genes coding for a variant of the Charcot-Marie-Tooth (CMT) disease, into fruit flies. CMT is one of the most common hereditary disorders of the peripheral nervous system. VIB research – directed by Albena Jordanova, Patrick Callaerts and Vincent Timmerman - shows that the flies recapitulate several symptoms of the human disease.

DNA is like your phone line. As Northwestern University biophysicist Johnathan Widom put it in a talk recently, DNA simultaneously encodes multiple overlapping signals, just like your phone line that allows you to call home while you're surfing the net via DSL. Written into your DNA is the code for the amino acid sequences of the proteins produced by your genes, as well as the so-called 'non-coding' regulatory sequences which essentially encode when, where, and how much your genes are expressed.

Prologue

A Ph.D. thesis at the University of the Basque Country has analyzed the role played by a number of emotional variables, such as the way in which negative emotions are controlled or attitudes to emotional expression, and to use these variables as tools to predict the possibility of suffering an eating disorder.

The first U.S. charter school opened in 1992. Since then the number of charters has grown to more than 4,000 in 40 states, serving 1.2 million students, according to RAND, a nonprofit research organization based in Santa Monica, California.

Students at charter schools graduate and attend college at significantly higher rates than students at traditional public schools, according to a Rand Corp. study led by a Michigan State University scholar.The study, which offers mixed overall results for charter school advocates, comes amid a national debate over President Obama's endorsement of charter schools, which are experimental public schools that operate independently of the local school board.

Do you have what it takes to be Scientific Blogging's alpha geek? Well it’s time put your geek where your mouth is…IF YOU CAN!

But first a warning: yes, you could Google for these answers, but then, deep down, you’ll know you’re a bad person. Then again, you might win a free Geeks’ Guide to World Domination. So you’ll have to balance total loss of self worth with free geek schwag. It’s up to you.

A baffling report says health workers fail to understand the importance of sex for Tanzanian children.   Yes, children.

Community health organizations working on AIDS prevention projects in Tanzania, frequently fail to understand how children in Tanzania deal with sex, says Miranda van Reeuwijk, who followed groups of children in Tanzania between 2004 and 2008.  

van Reeuwijk followed the children in order to help change this situation and says the children mainly view sex as something from which they can personally benefit, but frequently hide their relationships from parents and health workers. They are more scared of their strict parents than of HIV. 

Melatonin can slow down the effects of aging, according to a team at laboratoire Arago in Banyuls sur Mer (CNRS / Université Pierre et Marie Curie) who say that a treatment based on melatonin can delay the first signs of aging in a small mammal.

Better known as the ‘time-keeping' hormone, melatonin is naturally secreted by the body during the night. It is therefore a kind of biological signal for nightfall, allowing an organism to synchronize itself with the day/night rhythm.