It's not enough to be responsible for a carbon footprint, according to a Carnegie Mellon study, there's a whole carbon trail that needs to be taken into account and doing so will spur more companies and people into action.

In other words, we need to turn that carbon calculator knob up to 11.

Part of the problem with the global skepticism backlash is that there is no universally accepted way of calculating someone's carbon footprint - depending on which group created the calculator your carbon footprint could be either mild or so bad Al Gore is camped outside your house.

Biological clocks are the body's complex network of internal oscillators that regulate daily activity/rest cycles and other important aspects of physiology, including body temperature, heart rate and food intake. Besides sleep disorders, research in this field may eventually help treat the negative effects of shift work, aging and jet lag.

Biologists at the University of Virginia have discovered a switching mechanism in the eye that plays a key role in regulating the sleep/wake cycles in mammals.

The new finding demonstrates that light receptor cells in the eye are central to setting the rhythms of the brain's primary timekeeper, the suprachiasmatic nuclei, which regulates activity and rest cycles.

People taking prescription antidepressants appear to drive worse than people who aren't taking such drugs, and depressed people on antidepressants have even more trouble concentrating and reacting behind the wheel, according to the conclusions of a study released Sunday at the Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association.

University of North Dakota psychologists Holly Dannewitz. PhD, and Tom Petros, PhD, recruited 60 people to participate in a driving simulation in which participants had to make a series of common driving decisions, such as reacting to brake lights, stop signs or traffic signals while being distracted by speed limit signs, pylons, animals, other cars, helicopters or bicyclists.

The simulation tested steering, concentration and scanning. Thirty-one of the participants were taking at least one type of antidepressant while 29 control group members were taking no medications with the exception of oral contraceptives in some cases.

A new study of Chinese-Caucasian, Filipino-Caucasian, Japanese-Caucasian and Vietnamese-Caucasian individuals concludes that biracial Asian Americans are twice as likely as monoracial Asian Americans to be diagnosed with a psychological disorder.

"Up to 2.4 percent of the U.S. population self-identifies as mixed race, and most of these individuals describe themselves as biracial," said Nolan Zane, a professor of psychology and Asian American studies at UC Davis. "We cannot underestimate the importance of understanding the social, psychological and experiential differences that may increase the likelihood of psychological disorders among this fast-growing segment of the population."

Zane and his co-investigator, UC Davis psychology graduate student Lauren Berger, found that 34 percent of biracial individuals in a national survey had been diagnosed with a psychological disorder, such as anxiety, depression or substance abuse, versus 17 percent of monoracial individuals. The higher rate held up even after the researchers controlled for differences between the groups in age, gender and life stress, among other factors.

Jennifer Cheavens, assistant professor of psychology at Ohio State University and Laura Dreer of the University of Alabama at Birmingham say that hope can battle depression and discussed some of the latest research during a symposium Saturday Aug. 16 in Boston at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association in Boston.

How do you measure 'hope' in people, depressed or not?

Cheavens uses a 12-item questionnaire developed by her mentor, the late C.R. Snyder of the University of Kansas. In this measure, hope has two components: a map or pathway to get what you want, and the motivation and strength to follow that path.

“If you feel you know how to get what you want out of life, and you have that desire to make that happen, then you have hope,” Cheavens said.

While many studies have examined cheating among college students, new research looks at the issue from a different perspective – identifying students who are least likely to cheat.

The study of students at one Ohio university found that students who scored high on measures of courage, empathy and honesty were less likely than others to report their cheating in the past – or intending to cheat in the future.

Moreover, those students who reported less cheating were also less likely to believe that their fellow students regularly committed academic dishonesty.

Recently some people have disputed the existence of the NEUTRON, which if this had any sound basis would cast doubt on some of my recent activities. Maybe this is because the neutron has not had much of an impact in popular culture. The only item that I remember is a song Yes to the Neutron Bomb (1981) by the Liverpool Group “Moderates”. I first went a-neutron scattering about three years ago. I arrived at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford, and went to the ISIS facility. After getting my badge and doing the safety test, I walked through the experimental hall (picture) and found myself entering a room entitled “LOQ CABIN”, although it did not look at all as if Abraham Lincoln had been born there. But what is the point of scattering neutrons?

A possible future way to prevent relapses into drug dependence has been discovered by researchers at Linköping University and the German cancer research center DKFZ. The target is the dopamine-producing nerve cells in the midbrain.

Earlier research has shown that these cells become more excitable when a person takes drugs. To find out the functional meaning of this, these researchers used a mouse model for cocaine dependence. When they blocked the cells’ receptors for glutamate - the brain’s most important signal substance -the risk of relapsing into addiction vanished. The findings are being published in the highly ranked journal Neuron.

Dopamine-producing nerve cells are central to the brain’s reward system.

Preliminary research led by Dr. Lawrence Cheskin, MD, Director of John Hopkins Weight Management Center, suggests increasing intake of low-energy density foods like mushrooms in place of high-energy-density foods like lean ground beef is a strategy for preventing or treating obesity. This is good news for the more than one-third of U.S. adults age 20 and older who are obese, according to the Center for Disease Control and who therefore have a greater risk factor for cardiovascular disease, certain types of cancer, and type 2 diabetes. (1)

In a Mushroom Council study led by Dr. Cheskin, study participants were randomly chosen to receive either beef or mushroom lunch entrées over four days – lasagna, napoleon, sloppy Joe and chili. Subjects then switched entrées to consume the other ingredient (mushroom or beef) the following week.

Michael Phelps, Nastia Liukin, Misty May-Treanor and Lin Dan are four Olympic athletes who have each spent most of their life learning the skills needed to reach the top of their respective sports, swimming, gymnastics, beach volleyball and badminton (you were wondering about Lin, weren't you...) 

Their physical skills are obvious and amazing to watch.  For just a few minutes, instead of being a spectator, try to step inside the heads of each of them and try to imagine what their brains must accomplish when they are competing and how different the mental tasks are for each of their sports.