A 95-million-year-old amber deposit discovered in ethopia has added 30 arthropods from thirteen families of insects and spiders. The fossils represent some of the earliest African fossil records for a variety of arthropods, including wasps, barklice, moths, beetles, a primitive ant, a rare insect called a zorapteran, and a sheet-web weaving spider.

Parasitic fungi that lived on the resin-bearing trees were also found, as well as filaments of bacteria and the remains of flowering plants and ferns.  In addition, the amber deposit may provide fresh insights into the rise and diversification of flowering plants during the Cretaceous.

The find is documented in a new paper published this week in PNAS.

Madagascar's radiated tortoise is rapidly nearing extinction due to rampant hunting for its meat and the illegal pet trade. Biologists with the Turtle Survival Alliance (TSA) and Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) predict that unless drastic conservation measures take place, the species will be driven to extinction within the next 20 years.

The team's recent field survey in southern Madagascar's spiny forest, revealed that entire regions are devoid of tortoises. Residents also reported that armed bands of poachers had taken away truckloads of tortoises to supply open meat markets in towns such as Beloha and Tsihombe. Poaching camps have been discovered with the remains of thousands of radiated tortoises, and truckloads of tortoise meat have been seized recently.

43 percent of people are undecided, reluctant or do not wish to have their organs and tissue donated after their deaths, according to a new survey conducted by Donate Life America.

The results shows an increase in the number of people willing to donate compared to a survey conducted last year, but also suggest that a lot of misinformation still surrounds the issue.

Web sites that foster online communication and interaction are not merely vapid echo chambers of self-promotion, according to a new study in American Behavioral Scientist.

In fact, just the opposite is true. Interactions on Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites positively impact real-life and the intersection between online communication and the offline world forms two halves of a support mechanism for local communities.

We've had our first missing link of 2010.  What, you ask?  Was the missing link not discovered twice even last year?  Well, yes, if you read the mainstream media it happens quite often.  And it is happening again this week so look for plenty of news reports.

But just in case you are out there and need to write one of your own, here is a handy template you can use, based on my experience.

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The Mainstream Media Missing Link Article Generator

I was working on a paper recently, and my boss included a editing note that got me thinking.  The topic dealt with certain circuits in the limbic network of the brain.  The note included the line: "limbic connections are very complex".   The point of the edit was to emphasize that problems in the limbic network (like seizures) are difficult to treat in part because every part of the network is connected to every other part.  Therefore, it's hard to pin down any one effect that one part has on another.