Earth

EAST LANSING, Mich. – Using cell phones and playing video games may not be as harmful to children's academic performance as previously believed, according to new research by a team of Michigan State University scholars.

In fact, cell phones had no effect on academic performance among a group of 12-year-olds, the researchers found in a three-year study published by the Conference Proceedings of the International Association for Development of the Information Society, or IADIS, in Barcelona, Spain.

STILLWATER, OK—Ice storms and other severe weather can have devastating impacts on agricultural crops, including perennial tree crops. Major ice storms occur at least once a decade, with truly catastrophic "icing events" recorded once or twice a century within a broad belt extending from eastern Texas through New England. Ice storms can result in overwhelming losses to orchards and expensive cleanup for producers.

Family secrets such as alcoholism, abuse and unwanted pregnancies are quite common and an obstacle to healing when disease strikes, according to Marie-Dominique Beaulieu, a professor at the Université de Montréal's Department of Family Medicine.

"I see it in my practice," says Beaulieu, who also holds the Dr. Sadok Besrour Family Medicine Research Chair. "Family secrets lead to feelings of guilt, anger and helplessness. These feelings have a considerable impact on health, specifically on the capacity to adapt and find a balance in times of disease."

Leading members of the Texas scientific community, in collaboration with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), have urged the Texas State Board of Education to reject amendments to the state's draft science standards that would undermine sound science teaching.

The board is to take a final vote on the standards on Friday, 27 March.

Oil palm cultivation is a significant driver of tropical forest destruction across Southeast Asia. It could easily become a threat to the Amazon rainforest because of a proposed change in Brazil's legislation, new infrastructure and the influence of foreign agro-industrial firms in the region, according to William F. Laurance, senior scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama.

Two new greenhouse gases are accumulating in the atmosphere, according to an international research team led by scientists from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in the US and CSIRO scientist, Dr Paul Fraser, from the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research.

Nitrogen trifluoride (NF3) and sulfuryl fluoride (SO2F2) are powerful greenhouse gases that have recently been discovered to be growing quickly in the global background atmosphere.

Johns Hopkins researchers have discovered a new energy-making biochemical twist in determining the lifespan of yeast cells, one so valuable to longevity that it is likely to also functions in humans.

Their findings, published in the March 20 issue of Cell, reveal that making glucose is highly influenced by a large enzyme complex already known to fix damaged DNA, and which apparently affects yeast life span through a common chemical process—acetylation.

A revolutionary approach to the design of consumer products - from automobiles to plasma TVs - could cut manufacturers' warranty costs significantly. Writing in a forthcoming issue of the International Journal of Six Sigma and Competitive Advantage, US researchers explain how manufacturers should simply design for reliability.

The normal structure of metals is crystalline. Glass, on the other hand, is amorphous. But it's possible to make amorphous forms of metal, metallic glasses, which can be remarkably strong, having many properties equal to or better than their crystalline metal cousins. The catch is that bulk metallic glasses are highly susceptible to fatigue, a severe problem for their use as structural materials.

Until now, Triceratops was thought to be unusual among its ceratopsid relatives. While many ceratopsids—a common group of herbivorous dinosaurs that lived toward the end of the Cretaceous—have been found in enormous bonebed deposits of multiple individuals, all known Triceratops (over 50 in total) fossils have been solitary individuals.

New guidelines proposed by a group of international experts will help better study the prevalence and geography of counterfeit and other poor quality medicines that threaten public health across the world. The guidelines—called MEDQUARG, which stands for Medicine Quality Assessment Reporting Guidelines—are published in this week's open access journal PLoS Medicine.

• Researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in a study to determine the neural mechanisms involved in financial decision-making under risk when a financial expert gives advice.
• Study findings show that expert advice suppresses areas of the brain responsible for making value judgments. Conversely, those regions of the brain show activity when outside advice is not involved in the decision-making process.

Coenzyme F420, a small molecule that helps certain enzymes transfer electrons, is found in microorganisms known as methane-producing archaea, some of which thrive in extreme environments. It also helps the bacterium that causes tuberculosis (TB) to survive the defenses of the human immune system. Scientists have now discovered at least one way F420 helps to arm the pathogen.

PASADENA, Calif.--A tiny genetic mutation is the key to understanding why nicotine--which binds to brain receptors with such addictive potency--is virtually powerless in muscle cells that are studded with the same type of receptor. That's according to California Institute of Technology (Caltech) researchers, who report their findings in the March 26 issue of the journal Nature.

INDIANAPOLIS – Same-day medical scheduling, also known as on demand scheduling, does not improve care of chronically ill individuals, according to a study of 4,060 adult patients with diabetes.