Jean Piaget, founder of genetic epistemology and key researcher in child development psychology, showed that kids attribute “life status” to all things that move on their own, like bikes or clouds, and even 10-year-olds have difficulty understanding the nature of a 'living' thing.

Understanding the concept of a living thing is a late developmental achievement, he stated.

New research by Northwestern University psychologist Florencia Anggoro and colleagues Sandra Waxman and Doug Medin proposes that the way in which “alive” and other biological concepts are named within a given language also shapes their understanding and acquisition in children.

The researchers compared children ages 4 to 9 speaking English and Indonesian, a pair of languages with an intriguing difference - in English, but not Indonesian, the term 'animal' is polysemous, or has more than one meaning: one sense includes all animate objects (the animal kingdom) while the other excludes humans (‘don’t eat like an animal!’)

Researchers at the University of Cincinnati and Florida State University have confirmed evidence of domesticated sunflowers in Mexico — 4,000 years before what had been previously believed.

“People sometimes ask “What is the big deal about sunflower?” says David Lentz, professor of biological sciences and executive director of the Center for Field Studies in the McMicken College of Arts & Sciences at the University of Cincinnati (UC).

It's legal, it's gaining popularity among teenagers and young adults and it's one of the most potent hallucinogens around.

Brain-imaging studies performed in animals at Brookhaven National Laboratory have provided researchers with clues about why this increasingly popular recreational drug that causes hallucinations and motor-function impairment in humans is abused. Using trace amounts of Salvia divinorum – also known as “salvia,” a Mexican mint plant that can be smoked in the form of dried leaves or serum – Brookhaven scientists found that the drug’s behavior in the brains of primates mimics the extremely fast and brief “high” observed in humans.

Women who have used Fosamax are nearly twice as likely to develop the most common kind of chronically irregular heartbeat (atrial fibrillation) than are those who have never used it, according to research from Group Health and the University of Washington published in the April 28 Archives of Internal Medicine.

Merck markets Fosamax, the most widely used drug treatment for the bone-thinning disease osteoporosis, explained study leader Susan Heckbert, MD, PhD, MPH, a professor of epidemiology and scientific investigator in the Cardiovascular Health Research Unit at the University of Washington. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the first generic versions (called alendronate) in February.

A widely used class of diabetes medications appears to be associated with an increased risk for fractures, according to a report in the April 28 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

“The insulin-sensitizing thiazolidinediones are a relatively new and effective class of oral antidiabetic agents that have gained wide use in clinical conditions characterized by insulin resistance,” the authors write as background information in the article. Two drugs in this category, pioglitazone and rosiglitazone, account for 21 percent of oral diabetes medications prescribed in the United States and 5 percent of those in Europe. Recent studies have suggested that these therapies may have unfavorable effects on bone, resulting in slower bone formation and faster bone loss.

Young women who took the commonly used epilepsy drug phenytoin for one year showed significant bone loss compared to women taking other epilepsy drugs, according to a study published in the April 29, 2008, issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

Researchers tested the bone health of 93 women with epilepsy who were between the ages of 18 and 40 and were taking the epilepsy drugs phenytoin, carbamazepine, lamotrigine or valproate. Bone mineral density was measured at the spine and two areas of the hip, (the femoral neck and total hip) at the beginning of the study and one year later. Researchers also evaluated each woman’s nutrition and physical activity, along with other factors that affect bone health.

New heart research published inNature Genetics reveals how a gene called osteoglycin (Ogn), which had not previously been linked with heart function, plays a key role in regulating heart growth. The study suggests that the gene can behave abnormally in some people, and that this can lead to the heart becoming abnormally enlarged.

The researchers hope that through understanding how enlarged hearts are linked to the workings of genes like Ogn, they will be able to develop new treatments for the condition, which affects a large proportion of those with high blood pressure, obesity and diabetes.

Scientists believe that enlarged hearts are caused by a combination of genetic factors and external stimuli such as high blood pressure and obesity. However, the role played by genes has remained largely unknown.

Are climate change and carbon emissions inextricably linked? New research published in Carbon Balance and Management suggests that this may not be the case, although it may be some time before we reach this saturation point.

The land and the oceans contain significantly more carbon than the atmosphere, and exchange carbon dioxide with the atmosphere. The amount of CO2 emissions absorbed by the land or the oceans vary in response to changes in climate (including natural variations such as El Nino or volcanic eruptions). So current theories suggest that climate change will have a feedback effect on the rate that atmospheric CO2 increases; rising CO2 levels in turn add to global warming.

The link between the carbon cycle, and human effects caused by emissions, energy use and agriculture, may only be relevant for the next 'several centuries,’ suggest Igor Mokhov and Alexey Eliseev from the A.M. Obukhov Institute of Atmospheric Physics RAS, in Moscow, Russia. The authors used a climate model known as IAP RAS CM to study how feedback between our climate and the carbon cycle changes over time. In their simulations, the authors assumed that fossil fuel emissions would grow exponentially with a characteristic timescale from 50 to 250years.

Nitric oxide has emerged as an important signaling molecule in plants - as in mammals including people. In studies of a tropical medicinal herb as a model plant, researchers have found that nitric oxide targets a number of proteins and enzymes in plants.

In collaborative work with the research group of Renu Deswal, a faculty member, and her doctoral student at the Botany Department, University of Delhi, India, Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientist Autar Mattoo has identified 19 such targeted proteins and enzymes in Kalanchoe pinnata, also known as "miracle leaf."

These proteins and enzymes are involved in regulating processes from seed germination to cell development to plant death.

As a futurist I speak and write about trends and the future. I am often asked questions about the future of one thing or another. In most cases I speak to general trends, not specific outcomes. In some areas I can be somewhat specific as I have taken the time to analyze and then cross reference what I have learned with the trends and forces I see. One of those areas is the price of oil. In early 2007, when the price of oil was $53 a barrel I was invited on a business program to predict what I thought the price of oil might be by the end of the year. At that time I said that I thought that oil would exceed $80 a barrel and could well approach $100, though I didn’t think it would cross that barrier in 2007. The reporter, who had never spoken with a futurist, calling me a ‘so-called futurist’ was trying to contain her sputtering disbelief. The opposite side was some ‘oil industry analyst’ who spoke about a price fluctuation between $50-70 for the remainder of the year. About eight months ago, I wrote that I thought that the near term trading range for the price of oil for the next couple of years would be $80-125. At the time I stated that while there was little on the horizon to create a downward pressure below $80, there was much on the horizon that could cause an upward pressure to $125 and that the long term trend would be ever upward and that downward pressure would provide only temporary dips.