New satellite data indicate that March 2010 was the third warmest month since December 1978, compared to seasonal norms, according to researchers at the Earth System Science Center (ESSC) at The University of Alabama in Huntsville.

Powered by the most intense El Nino Pacific Ocean warming event since 1997-1998, the first three months of 2010 have all landed among the six warmest months in the satellite temperature record, which starts in December 1978.

Anthropologists writing in the Journal of Social Archaeology say they have found evidence indicating that Mayan citizens recorded their family history by burying it within their homes.

Maya in the Classic period (A.D. 250-900) regularly "terminated" their homes, razing the walls, burning the floors and placing artifacts and (sometimes) human remains on top before burning them again.

Evidence suggests these rituals occurred every 40 or 50 years and likely marked important dates in the Maya calendar. After termination, the family built a new home on the old foundation, using broken and whole vessels, colorful fragments, animal bones and rocks to mark important areas and to provide ballast for a new plaster floor.

Researchers have identified the brain circuit that underlies our ability to resist instant gratification in order to earn a better payoff.

The effort provides insight, scientists say, into the capacity for "mental time travel," also known as episodic future thought, that enables humans to make choices with high long-term benefits. Results of the research are published in Neuron.

Several models have been proposed to explain the neural basis of assigning relative value to multiple rewards at different points in time (also known as "intertemporal decision making") in humans. Until now, however, many questions remained unanswered, and the brain regions and mechanisms involved in this process were unclear.

Exclusive licenses to gene patents are supposed to spur development of new technologies for gauging disease risk but actually do more to block competition in the gene testing market, say researchers from the Duke Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy (IGSP).

As single-gene tests give way to multi-gene or even whole-genome scans, exclusive patent rights could slow promising new technologies and business models for genetic testing even further, the Duke researchers say.

The findings emerge from a series of case studies that examined genetic risk testing for 10 clinical conditions, including breast and colon cancer, cystic fibrosis, and hearing loss. The studies appear April 14 in a special issue of Genetics in Medicine.

Slender women worry about packing on extra weight, say Brigham Young University researchers who used MRI technology to observe what happened in the brain when people viewed images of complete strangers.

If the stranger happened to be overweight and female, it surprisingly activated an area in women's brains that processes identity and self-reflection. Men did not show signs of any self-reflection in similar situations.

"These women have no history of eating disorders and project an attitude that they don't care about body image," said Mark Allen, a BYU neuroscientist. "Yet under the surface is an anxiety about getting fat and the centrality of body image to self."

The results appear in Personality and Individual Differences.

Researchers from North Carolina State University are making an attempt to help academia lose its "ivory tower" reputation by connecting students to their local communities.

The new research project lays out guidelines that can be used to develop and implement partnerships between academics and local communities to foster research efforts that address social problems.