For the first time, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania are able to pinpoint brain waves that distinguish true from false memories, providing a better understanding of how memory works and creating a new strategy to help epilepsy patients retain cognitive function.

The study, the first to show that brain waves predict the veracity of human memories, is available online in the journal Psychological Science and in the November 2007 print edition.

To test whether distinct patterns of electrophysiological activity prior to a response can distinguish true from false memories, psychologists at Penn recorded brain activity from 52 neurosurgical patients being treated for drug-resistant epilepsy.

Envisat satellite image captures fierce easterly desert winds blowing smoke from wildfires in Southern California. Gale-force winds have fed more than a dozen fires from Santa Barbara to the Mexican border since breaking out on Sunday, killing one person and forcing the evacuation of a quarter of a million people.

In the full image below, sand is visible being blown from Mexico’s Baja California Peninsula over the Gulf of California to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west.

A new neurobiological study has found that a synthetic form of THC, the active ingredient in cannabis, is an effective anti-depressant at low doses. However, at higher doses, the effect reverses itself and can actually worsen depression and other psychiatric conditions like psychosis.

The study, published in the October 24 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience, was led by Dr. Gabriella Gobbi of McGill University and Le Centre de Recherche Fernand Seguin of Hôpital Louis-H. Lafontaine, affiliated with l'Université de Montréal. First author is Dr. Gobbi's McGill PhD student Francis Bambico, along with Noam Katz and the late Dr.

Different cultures have different standards and norms for appropriate body size and shape, which can effect how children perceive their body image.

Some cultures celebrate a fuller body shape more than others, but researchers at the Center for Obesity Research and Education (CORE) at Temple University have found that an overweight or obese child can still be unhappy with his or her body, despite acceptance from within their ethnic group.

“This unhappiness is yet another consequence of childhood obesity,” said Gary Foster, Ph.D., director of CORE and president-elect of the North American Association for the Study of Obesity.

Scientists have obtained core samples from deep inside California's San Andreas Fault for the first time, a finding that may lead to a better understanding of the underground molecular events associated with earthquakes, according to an article in the Oct. 22 issue of Chemical&Engineering News.

The 800-mile-long fault that bisects California is infamous as the source of the region's most devastating earthquakes. Conventional sampling of the fault yields slurries of rock chips that are fragmented and difficult to study.

Albert Fert of Université Paris-Sud and Peter Grünberg of Forschungszentrum received the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2007 for their independent work on Giant Magnetoresistance (GMR), which basically blazed the trail for high-capacity storage devices in small form factors like MP3 players.

Gold really does make you feel better, and not just because you can buy things to make misery more tolerable. Scientists at Duke University Medical Center say new insight into the healing properties of gold may renew interest in gold salts as a treatment for rheumatoid arthritis and other inflammatory diseases.

Physicians first used injections of gold salts in the early 1900s to ease the pain and swelling associated with arthritis. But treatment came at a high cost: The shots took months to take effect and side effects included rashes, mouth sores, kidney damage and occasionally, problems with the bone marrow’s ability to make new blood cells.

A new global study revealed that 40 percent of men and 30 percent of women are overweight, while 24 percent of men and 27 percent of women are obese, researchers reported in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.

In the study, 168,159 people (69,409 men, 98,750 women) from 18 to 80 years old (average age 48) in 63 countries across five continents were evaluated by their primary care physicians.

"This is the largest study to assess the frequency of adiposity (body fat) in the clinic, providing a snapshot of patients worldwide," said study lead author Beverley Balkau, Ph.D., director of research at INSERM in Villejuif, France. (INSERM is the French equivalent of the U.S.

Human activities are releasing carbon dioxide faster than ever, while the natural processes that normally slow its build up in the atmosphere appear to be weakening, according to a new report. The report states that “together, these effects characterize a carbon cycle that is generating stronger-than-expected climate forcing sooner than expected.”

Between 2000 to 2006, human activities such as burning fossil fuels, manufacturing cement, and tropical deforestation contributed an average of 4.1 billion metric tons of carbon to the atmosphere each year, yielding an annual growth rate for atmospheric carbon dioxide of 1.93 parts per million (ppm). “This is the highest since the beginning of continuous monitoring in 1959,” states the report.