Scholars say video recordings show that tropical corvids fashion complex tools in the wild. The team attached tiny video 'spy-cameras'  to the crows to observe their natural foraging behavior and say there were two instances of hooked stick tool making on the footage they recorded, with one crow spending a minute making the tool, before using it to probe for food in tree crevices and even in leaf litter on the ground.

New Caledonian crows (Corvus moneduloides) are found on the South Pacific island of New Caledonia. They can use their bills to whittle twigs and leaves into bug-grabbing implements; some believe their tool-use is so advanced that it rivals that of some primates.

Currently available evidence from randomized controlled trials (RCT) does not support the use of nalmefene for harm reduction for people with alcohol dependence, according to a systematic review and meta-analysis (SRMA) published this week in PLOS Medicine. The study, conducted by Florian Naudet at INSERM, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Rennes, France also indicates that evidential support for the use of nalmefene to reduce alcohol consumption among this population is limited.

DALLAS, December 22, 2015 -- People scoring well on the American Heart Association's Life's Simple 7 checklist for a healthy heart are less likely to develop heart failure, a condition that reduces blood and oxygen flow to the body, according to new research in the American Heart Association's journal Circulation: Heart Failure.

Life's Simple 7 encompasses seven measures that people can use to rate their heart health and take steps to improve it. The measures are: manage blood pressure, control cholesterol, reduce blood sugar, get physically active, eat better, lose weight and stop smoking.

Low levels of vitamin D have long been identified as an unwanted hallmark of weight loss surgery, but now findings of a new Johns Hopkins study of more than 930,000 patient records add to evidence that seasonal sun exposure -- a key factor in the body's natural ability to make the "sunshine vitamin" -- plays a substantial role in how well people do after such operations.

Results of the study, published online Dec. 14 in the journal Obesity Science & Practice, reveal interplay among vitamin D status, seasons, geography and surgery outcomes, according to Leigh Peterson, Ph.D., M.H.S., a nutritionist and postdoctoral research fellow at the Johns Hopkins Center for Bariatric Surgery, who led the research.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- While 3-D printers have become relatively cheap and available, 3-D scanners have lagged well behind. But now, an algorithm developed by Brown University researchers my help bring high-quality 3-D scanning capability to off-the-shelf digital cameras and smartphones.

"One of the things my lab has been focusing on is getting 3-D image capture from relatively low-cost components," said Gabriel Taubin, a professor in Brown's School of Engineering. "The 3-D scanners on the market today are either very expensive, or are unable to do high-resolution image capture, so they can't be used for applications where details are important."

In a "clash of the microbes," University of Delaware plant scientists are uncovering more clues critical to disarming a fungus that is the number one killer of rice plants.

The findings, published in December in Frontiers in Plant Science and in Current Opinion in Plant Biology, may lead to a more effective control for Magnaporthe oryzae, the fungus that causes rice blast disease.