I think that in many ways, the motivation of scientists is similar to that of prospectors in the 1800s. The prospectors had gold fever, grubstakes, the ability to persevere against long odds of success, and the rare peak experience of striking the mother lode. Scientists have idea fever, government grants as grubstakes, the ability to persevere against long odds, and the rare experience of having one of their ideas turn out to be truly significant, which might happen once in a scientific lifetime. I'll describe one such idea, then speculate on where it might take us in the next ten years. But first, a little background.

According to a new study in the American Naturalist that compared the skull shapes of domestic dogs with those of different species across the order Carnivora, domestic dogs have followed their own evolutionary path, twisting Darwin's directive "survival of the fittest" to their own needs -- and have proved him right in the process.

The study found that the skull shapes of domestic dogs varied as much as those of the whole order. It also showed that the extremes of diversity were farther apart in domestic dogs than in the rest of the order. This means, for instance, that a Collie has a skull shape that is more different from that of a Pekingese than the skull shape of the cat is from that of a walrus.

In a new Cerebral Cortex study, researchers say they can predict a person's performance on a video game simply by measuring the volume of specific structures in their brain. The authors found that nearly a quarter of the variability in achievement seen among men and women trained on a new video game could be predicted by measuring the volume of three structures in their brains.

The study adds to the evidence that specific parts of the striatum, a collection of distinctive tissues tucked deep inside the cerebral cortex, profoundly influence a person's ability to refine his or her motor skills, learn new procedures, develop useful strategies and adapt to a quickly changing environment.

The European Southern Observatory (ESO) has just released a new image of NGC 6334, an emission nebula discovered by astronomer John Herschel in 1837 and dubbed the Cat's Paw Nebula. 

This new portrait of the Cat's Paw Nebula was created from images taken with the Wide Field Imager (WFI) instrument at the 2.2-metre MPG/ESO telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile, combining images taken through blue, green and red filters, as well as a special filter designed to let through the light of glowing hydrogen.

In a new article published in WIREs Congnitive Science, researchers from Duke University and the NIH suggest that the latest cognitive science research has the potential to fundamentally change how the legal system operates.

The team explains that Neurolaw, also known as legal neuroscience, builds upon the research of cognitive, psychological, and social neuroscience by considering the implications for these disciplines within a legal framework. Each of these disciplinary collaborations has been ground-breaking in increasing our knowledge of the way the human brain operates, and now neurolaw continues this trend.

Biologists know that Chaperonins ensure proteins are folded properly to carry out their assigned roles in cells, and according to a new letter published in Nature, they may also know how these molecular chaperones function.

In the new study of archaea (single-celled organisms without nuclei to enclose their genetic information), researchers from Baylor College of Medicine and Stanford University in California discovered how the Group II chaperonins close and open folding chambers to initate the folding event and to release the functional protein to the cell.

 According to a new study in Nature that analyzed large sets of ozone data captured since 1984, springtime ozone levels above western North America are rising primarily due to air flowing eastward from the Pacific Ocean, a trend that is largest when the air originates in Asia. These increases in ozone could make it more difficult for the United States to meet Clean Air Act standards for ozone pollution at ground level.