Would you sacrifice one person to save five?

Psychologists say those moral choices could depend on whether you are using a foreign language or your native tongue.

The new paper from the University of Chicago and Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona finds that people using a foreign language take a relatively utilitarian approach to moral dilemmas, making decisions based on assessments of what's best for the common good. That pattern holds even when the utilitarian choice would produce an emotionally difficult outcome, such as sacrificing one life so others could live. 

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, biofuels - ethanol - was touted as the savior of the environment if it replaced fossil fuels. Former Vice-President Al Gore of Tennessee advocated them, environmental corporations pushed for lobied and finally, in 2005, they were mandated and subsidized.

It quickly became evident that the claims about ethanol were not based on science.

Ethanol was already big business in Brazil and given the benefit of time, scholars can now analyze their air quality as a result of switching from gasoline - and then back. Oddly, ethanol became too expensive so residents of São Paulo, Brazil switched from ethanol back to gasoline for their flexible-fuel vehicles.

It used to be that homelessness was a way of life - the hobo lifestyle was one of odd jobs and flop houses.

But as governments increasingly regulated buildings, flop houses were no longer viable and it is illegal to hire people unless they are registered contractors or making them employees. Actual homelessness has surged. 

Terrorism can be a successful strategy for rebel groups during civil war, according to a Michigan State University political science academic, because governments will believe responding with force extends the conflict 

Jakana Thomas, assistant professor of political science, writing in the American Journal of Political Science, believes that if governments negotiate or use sound counter-terrorism efforts, they stand a better chance of bringing about a peaceful resolution 

Sweet potato products have increased in popularity so growers and processors are interested in identifying ways to make the crop more widely available. 

Costs of natural hazards are at historically high levels, and show an increasing trend, which is expected, because wages and inflation go up every year, but estimates are almost meaningless. When estimated damage gets high-profile media claims, like in New York City after tropical storm Sandy, the costs unsurprisingly match those and even allow for a generous overrun.

When and where did the ancient Iapetus Ocean suture (the most fundamental Appalachian structure) form? Is part of New England made up of ancient African-derived rocks? What is the Moretown terrane? 

Mountain-building events, called "orogenies," in the northern U.S. Appalachia record the closure of the Iapetus Ocean, an ancient precursor to the Atlantic. The Iapetus separated continental fragments of ancestral North America and Africa more than 450 million years ago.

CHICAGO, Apr. 28, 2014 –Many consumers are aware they should make protein a priority at breakfast, but it may be equally important for them to choose an optimal amount of protein to maximize its benefits, suggests new research presented at the American Society for Nutrition's Experimental Biology conference this week. Researchers found that when comparing common breakfasts with varying amounts of protein, a commercially prepared turkey-sausage and egg bowl, cereal and milk, and pancakes with syrup, choosing the higher-protein commercially prepared turkey-sausage and egg bowl provided increased feelings of fullness and lesser calorie intake at lunch, when compared to the lower-protein breakfasts.1

Strategy-based cognitive training has the potential to enhance cognitive performance and spill over to real-life benefit according to a data-driven perspective article by the Center for BrainHealth at The University of Texas at Dallas published in the open-access journal Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience. The research-based perspective highlights cognitive, neural and real-life changes measured in randomized clinical trials that compared a gist-reasoning strategy-training program to memory training in populations ranging from teenagers to healthy older adults, individuals with brain injury to those at-risk for Alzheimer's disease.

Respiratory failure caused by chronic lung infection with Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacteria is a common cause of death in patients with cystic fibrosis (CF), a genetic disease that is common in individuals of European descent. A study published on April 24th in PLOS Pathogens demonstrates that an antimicrobial peptide produced by human immune cells can promote mutations in the bacterium that make it more lethal.