Psychologists at the University of Leeds say people who spend a lot of time browsing the internet are more likely to show depressive symptoms.

In a study to be published in the journal Psychopathology next week, researchers documented evidence that some users have developed a compulsive internet habit, whereby they replace real-life social interaction with online chat rooms and social networking sites. The results suggest that this type of addictive surfing can have a serious impact on mental health.

 The internet use and depression levels of 1,319 people aged 16-51 were evaluated for the study. Of these, 1.2% were classed as being internet addicted. While small, this figure is larger than the incidence of gambling in the UK, which stands at 0.6%.

The uplifting emotion we experience when watching others perform a virtuous deed--known as "elevation"--may be enough to get us to go out and perform good acts ourselves, say new findings reported in Psychological Science.

During the study, volunteers viewed either a neutral TV clip (showing scenes from a nature documentary) or an uplifting TV clip (a segment from "The Oprah Winfrey Show" showing musicians thanking their mentors) that was designed to induce feelings of elevation and then wrote an essay describing what they watched. As they received their payment and a receipt, they were to indicate if they would be willing to participate in an additional study.

The starburst region NGC 3603 is a cosmic factory where stars form frantically from the nebula's extended clouds of gas and dust. Located 22 000 light-years away from the Sun, it is the closest region of this kind known in our galaxy, providing astronomers with a local test bed for studying intense star formation processes, very common in other galaxies, but hard to observe in detail because of their great distance from us.

A new study published today in Nature suggests that approximately seven in every thousand morbidly obese people are missing a section of their DNA containing approximately 30 genes, which may be having a dramatic effect on their weight.

Researchers identified the missing genes in teenagers and adults who had learning difficulties or delayed development. They found 31 people who had nearly identical 'deletions' in one copy of their DNA. All of the adults with this genetic change had a BMI of over 30, which means they were obese.

A 60-million-year-old relative of crocodiles named Cerrejonisuchus improcerus ("small crocodile from Cerrejon") was likely a food source for Titanoboa, the largest snake the world has ever known, says a new study published this week in the Journal Vertebrate Paleontology.

Researchers from Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama and paleontologists from the Florida Museum of Natural History found fossils of the new species of ancient crocodile in the Cerrejon Formation in northern Colombia. The site, one of the world's largest open-pit coal mines, also yielded skeletons of the giant, boa constrictor-like Titanoboa, which measured up to 45 feet long. The study is the first report of a fossil crocodyliform from the same site.

By considering molecular-level events on a broader scale, researchers now have a clearer and more complicated picture of how one class of immune cells goes wrong when loaded with cholesterol. The findings reported in Cell Metabolism show that, when it comes to the development of atherosclerosis and heart disease, it's not about any one bad actor—it's about a network gone awry.

The new findings also highlight a pretty remarkable thing: researchers still aren't sure how cholesterol causes heart disease.