Scientist Discovers New Horned Dinosaur Genus:
A scientist at The Cleveland Museum of Natural History has announced the discovery of a new horned dinosaur, named Albertaceratops nesmoi, approximately 20 feet long and weighing nearly one half ton, or the weight of a pickup truck. The newly identified plant-eating dinosaur lived nearly 78 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous Period in what is now southernmost Alberta, Canada. Its identification marks the discovery of a new genus and species and sheds exciting new light on the evolutionary history of the Ceratopsidae dinosaur family. Only one other horned dinosaur has been discovered in Canada since the 1950s.
Life Cycle Mapped Of Unique Organism In Extreme Environments:
Microorganisms that thrive under extreme conditions, such as hot acid, not only can be used as a model for how life got started on earth or can emerge on other planets but can also provide knowledge about humans. A team of researchers at Uppsala University have studied some 2,000 genes in such an organism and mapped its life cycle.
Deep In The Ocean, A Clam That Acts Like A Plant:
How does life survive in the black depths of the ocean? At the surface, sunlight allows green plants to "fix" carbon from the air to build their bodies. Around hydrothermal vents deep in the ocean live communities of giant clams with no gut and no functional digestive system, depending on symbiotic bacteria to use energy locked up in hydrogen sulfide to replace sunlight. Now, the genome of this symbiont has been completely sequenced and published in Science.
Why 'Wanting' And 'Liking' Something Simultaneously Is Overwhelming:
Wanting and liking are separate urges controlled by different brain circuits and when combined at once, the impact on the brain is especially powerful, according to University of Michigan research. The U-M study reports that the brain divides wanting and liking into separate circuits for the same sweet reward. Natural heroin-like chemicals (opioids) in a few brain "pleasure hotspots" make individuals want to eat more of a tasty sweet food, and make them like its sweet taste more when they eat it, the study says. The same thing happens with addictions to drugs, sex, gambling and other pursuits involving "brain reward" circuits. The research is featured in the Journal of Neuroscience.
Sleepy Driver Near-misses May Predict Accident Risks:
Getting behind the wheel on an insufficient amount of sleep poses a significant risk to not only the driver, but to others sharing the road. Sleep deprivation may affect a driver's awareness of his or her surroundings, as well as reduce one's ability to react to situations in time. As a result, this endangers the lives of themselves -- and others -- by increasing the likelihood of causing an accident. In the first known scientific study into the important question of near-miss sleepy accidents and their association with actual accidents, a study published in the March 1st issue of the journal SLEEP finds that sleepy near-misses may be dangerous precursors to an actual accident.
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