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Spanish and French researchers have defined the age, location, size and geochemistry of the volcanoes of Gran Canaria during the Holocene, 11,000 years ago, in order to draw up a map of volcanic hazards for the island. The research shows that the area of greatest volcanic activity is one of the most heavily populated areas in the north east of the island, which has suffered 24 eruptions over the period studied.

FAIRFAX, Va.—Given the current controversy over vertebroplasty—a minimally invasive treatment performed by interventional radiologists in individuals with painful osteoporotic vertebral compression fractures that fail to respond to conventional medical therapy—what's a patient to do? Trust your medical team to decide if you are an appropriate candidate for vertebroplasty and trust the experience of hundreds of thousands of other patients who have undergone the spine treatment successfully and received life-improving effects, says the Society of Interventional Radiology.

The sediments of the Kimmeridge Clay Formation were deposited during the Late Jurassic between around 160 and 145 million years ago, the age of the reptiles. They are the main oil source rock in the North Sea. However, within this unit beds rich in organic matter are interspersed with organic-poor sediments. New evidence demonstrates that organic-poor sediments were probably caused by post-depositional loss of organic matter during so-called 'burn-down' events.

When we believe two events are connected—such as drinking caffeine and getting a burst of energy—we tend to compress time, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research.

American culture venerates choice, but choice may not be the key to happiness and health, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research.

"Americans live in a political, social, and historical context that advances personal freedom, choice, and self-determination above all else," write authors Hazel Rose Markus (Stanford University) and Barry Schwartz (Swarthmore College). "Contemporary psychology has proliferated this emphasis on choice and self-determination as the key to healthy psychological functioning."

When consumers talk to each other about products, they generally respond more favorably to abstract language than concrete descriptions, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research.

"In a series of experiments, we explored when and why consumers use abstract language in word-of-mouth messages, and how these differences in language use affect the receiver," write authors Gaby A. C. Schellekens, Peeter W. J. Verlegh, and Ale Smidts (Erasmus University, The Netherlands).

Are we overloaded and paralyzed by too many choices, or is it good to have so many options? A new study in the Journal of Consumer Research says the jury is still out on so-called "choice overload."

Authors Benjamin Scheibehenne (University of Basel, Switzerland), Rainer Greifeneder (University of Mannheim, Germany), and Peter M. Todd (Indiana University, Bloomington) conducted a meta-analysis of 50 published and unpublished experiments that investigated choice overload. They found that consumers generally respond positively to having many choices.

According to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research, consumers don't always react positively to persuasion tactics that have nothing to do with the product (what the authors refer to as "puffery").

London, UK, 18 January 2010 - The journal Homeopathy (http://www.elsevier.com/locate/homp) has published a two part special issue focusing on biological models of homeopathy. The special issue highlights experiments on homeopathic treatments in biological models, ranging from whole animals and plants to cell cultures and enzymes, showing a remarkable range of findings.

Consumers remember the sounds of numbers in prices and associate certain sounds with value, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research.

Authors Keith S. Coulter (Clark University) and Robin A. Coulter (University of Connecticut) studied the ability of number-sounds to convey meaning and influence price perceptions.

Researchers from Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) and the French research facility CNRS, south of Paris, are using electric fields to manipulate the property of electrons known as "spin" to store data permanently. This principle could not only improve random access memory in computers, it could also revolutionize the next generation of electronic devices.

Biophysicists at TUM, the Technische Universitaet Muenchen, have published the results of single-molecule experiments that bring a higher-resolution tool to the study of protein folding. How proteins arrive at the three-dimensional shapes that determine their essential functions – or cause grave diseases when folding goes wrong – is considered one of the most important and least understood questions in the biological and medical sciences. Folding itself follows a path determined by its energy landscape, a complex property described in unprecedented detail by the TUM researchers.

Montréal, January 18, 2010 – A large international research group led by Dr. Tarik Möröy, a researcher at the Institut de recherches cliniques de Montréal (IRCM), has discovered that a variant of the gene "Growth Factor Independence 1" (GFI1) predisposes humans to develop acute myeloid leukemia (AML), a certain subtype of blood cancer. This study was coordinated by Dr. Möröy at the IRCM in collaboration with multiple international study groups located throughout Germany, the Netherlands and the United States.

*New Zealand missionaries want to host the "Chosen People" for the spiritual experience; Israeli backpackers use their services for the cheap deal. "Regardless of conflicting expectations, both sides come out ahead; the Israelis even come out with unexpected spiritual gains," says Prof. Yoel Mansfeld of the University of Haifa who studied the phenomenon.*

A new study by a research team at Uppsala University shows how new functions can develop in an enzyme. This can explain, for example, how resistance to toxins can occur so simply. The findings are now being published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

Every biological being needs a large number of enzymes for the many functions of cells. In the spirit of Darwin, enzymes in an organism can change over time to meet new needs. This is done by alterations in the enzymes' building blocks that are caused by mutations in the DNA.