We are stardust - scientists and citizen scientists alike

Physics Today's Ashley Smart describes a huge recent win for citizen science: some 30,000 volunteers pored over millions of microscopic images looking for dust collected a decade ago by NASA's Stardust probe, and their efforts have helped identify candidate interstellar grains:

Abortion and teen pregnancy dropped among teens who received free contraception and were educated about the pros and cons of various birth control methods, according to a new study in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Ice sheets were never simple. There is no magic knob that could be turned to optimize melting rates and movement, outside environmental press releases.

A new paper in Nature this week
shows that not only is meltwater not as simple as sometimes contended, we don't even know what we don't know. Observations of moulins (vertical conduits connecting water on top of the glacier down to the bed of the ice sheet) and boreholes in Greenland show that subglacial channels ameliorate the speedup caused by water delivery to the base of the ice sheet in the short term.

BEIJING; BERKELEY, CA; and UPTON, NY - The Daya Bay Collaboration, an international group of scientists studying the subtle transformations of subatomic particles called neutrinos, is publishing its first results on the search for a so-called sterile neutrino,

Though the search is on for a possible new type of neutrino beyond the three known neutrino "flavors," or types, the so-called sterile neutrino remains elusive.

A new paper by the Daya Bay Collaboration in Physical Review Letters finds no evidence for sterile neutrinos in a previously unexplored mass range.

When choosing a new leader, people base their decision on desirable characteristics such as honesty and trustworthiness. However once leaders are in power, can we trust them to exercise it in a prosocial manner? 

A new paper in The Leadership Quarterly finds that everyone gradually becomes susceptible to power the longer they have it.  Study author John Antonakis and his colleagues from the University of Lausanne explain, "We looked to examine what Lord Acton said over 100 years ago, that 'Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.'"

To investigate this the authors used experimental methods to distinguish between the situational and individual component; and determine if power corrupts or if corrupt individuals are drawn to power.

If you need another good reason to hit the gym, a new study finds it can improve memory. Georgia Institute of Technology researchers have found that an intense workout of as little as 20 minutes can enhance episodic memory, also known as long-term memory for previous events, by about 10 percent in healthy young adults