A team of paleontologists has discovered a new dinosaur species which belongs to the  same group of gigantic, long-necked, long-tailed, four-legged, plant-eating sauropods as Brachiosaurus. The new species has been dubbed 'Abydosaurus', and its discovery will be detailed in an upcoming issue of Naturwissenshaften.

The fossils were excavated from the Cedar Mountain Formation in Dinosaur National Monument near Vernal, Utah. The team recovered four heads – two still fully intact – from a quarry in Dinosaur National Monument in eastern Utah. Complete skulls have been recovered for only eight of more than 120 known varieties of sauropod.

Depression raises stress hormone levels in adolescent boys and girls but may lead to obesity only in girls, according to research in a recent issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health. Authors of the study suggest that early treatment of depression could help reduce stress and control obesity.

The hormone Cortisol regulates various metabolic functions in the body and is released as a reaction to stress. Researchers have long known that depression and cortisol are related to obesity, but they had not figured out the exact biological mechanism.

A new study from UK researchers suggests that deficits in prospective memory (remembering to remember, or remembering to perform an intended action) are more common for recreational drug users. The new research appears in the Journal of Psychopharmacology.

42 ecstasy/polydrug users (14 males, 28 females) and 31 non-users (5 males, 26 females)  were recruited for the study – all were students. The students were quizzed about their drug habits (including tobacco, cannabis and alcohol), and given questionnaires to assess their everyday memory, cognitive failures and prospective and retrospective memory.

A new study published this week in PLoS Biology suggests that seasonal changes in absolute humidity are the apparent underlying cause of wintertime influenza outbreaks. The study also found that the onset of outbreaks might be encouraged by anomalously dry weather conditions, at least in temperate regions.

Patients diagnosed with clinical depression may respond better to medical treatment as a result of belief in a personal God, say researchers at Rush University Medical Center writing in the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

136 adults diagnosed with major depression or bipolar depression at inpatient and outpatient psychiatric care facilities in Chicago participated in the study. The patients were surveyed shortly after admission for treatment and eight weeks later, using the Beck Depression Inventory, the Beck Hopelessness Scale, and the Religious Well-Being Scale – all standard instruments in the social sciences for assessing intensity, severity and depth of disease and feelings of hopelessness and spiritual satisfaction.

Most science talks I listen to, even good ones, leave me dissatisfied because the stories I hear never come to a complete resolution. The issue is this: we can get from traits to genes, and from genes to molecular biology. But we have largely failed at getting from molecular biology back to the characteristics of organisms. We don't do a good job explaining organismal traits with molecular biology.

How to sell a broken hockey stick


If there exists a scientist who can prove to the satisfaction of the world's leaders that global warming - anthropogenic or not - is a myth, he or she will get a Nobel prize and a medal from every government on Earth.  Why?  Because it will stifle all opposition to the 'business as usual' economic model.  Sorry, but I don't think that person exists.


How plausible are AGW theories in general?

I will address that question using the sort of logic that can be programmed into a computer to simulate human intelligence: semantic logic.

Question:

Life can be brutal for yeast in the wild. You don't know where your next meal is coming from or what form it's going to take. The key to being a successful yeast is to be metabolically agile, able to switch your metabolic state quickly based on the food source that's currently available on the bark of an oak tree or in the leaf litter of a forest floor.