|  Many Mental Disorders Affect Same Brain Regions In the study, researchers compared the results of hundreds of brain imaging studies covering six major psychiatric disorders. They found that most of the disorders were linked to gray matter loss in a network of three brain regions involved in higher cognitive functions, such as self-control and certain types of memory. Given these similarities in brain structure, treatments for one mental-health condition may be effective in others, the researchers said. For the past four decades, psychiatrists have diagnosed mental disorders according to a checklist of symptoms specified in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), said Dr. Amit Etkin, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist at Stanford University and senior author of the study, published today (Feb. 4) in the Journal of the American Medical Association Psychiatry. Read More » Sky River to Bust Northern California Drought This Week  | California forecasters are prepping the state's northern cities for a switch from extreme drought to drenching rain and damaging winds starting tomorrow (Feb. 5). An incoming atmospheric river could deliver at least 10 inches (25 centimeters) of rain in coastal and inland mountains, and 5 inches (13 cm) in valley areas, according to the National Weather Service. Atmospheric rivers are narrow currents of warm, moist air that transport huge amounts of water vapor from the tropics toward cooler latitudes. The storm arriving Thursday will be one of the most closely watched atmospheric rivers in history, as scientists plan to study the weather pattern from the ocean, in the air and on land.
| Read More » LEGO Mini Space Shuttle Toy Soars Out of Stores in Giveaway  | HOUSTON — It was "3, 2, 1... build-off!" at LEGO stores nationwide on Tuesday night (Feb. 3), as the toy company gave away thousands of space shuttle construction kits. The latest of LEGO's free Monthly Mini Model Builds, the mini space shuttle was especially a hit here in Houston, home to NASA's former space shuttle program for 30 years. Children ages six to 14, accompanied by their parents, lined up in droves outside the Baybrook Mall LEGO store, located just a few miles away from the Johnson Space Center. Indeed, the shop ran out of its space shuttle supply soon after the giveaway began at 5 p.m. CST.
| Read More » New Views of Pluto Captured By NASA Spacecraft (Photos)  | NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has snapped new images of Pluto — the first taken by the probe during its six-month approach to the dwarf planet. New Horizons captured the new photos — which show Pluto and its largest moon, Charon — with its telescopic camera on Jan. 25 and Jan. 27, when the probe was about 126 million miles (203 million kilometers) from the Pluto system. The images, and many others like it taken over the next few months, will help New Horizons stay on target for a highly anticipated close flyby of Pluto on July 14. NASA released the photos today (Feb. 4), on the birthday of American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto in 1930.
| Read More » Hidden Molten Channel Beneath Earth Discovered with a Blast  | The bottom of one of Earth's rocky plates has been visualized in fine detail using sound waves from dynamite exploded deep underground, revealing a once-hidden channel of molten rock. While the images are impressive in their own right, the findings could also provide insight into a long-standing question about the mechanics of plate tectonics, the theory that Earth's outer shell is divided into "plates" that slowly move over the mantle (the molten-rock layer above the planet's core) over millions of years, said study co-author Tim Stern, a geologist at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. The team had placed about 0.5 tons of dynamite in several steel-encased bore holes along the subduction zone. When the dynamite exploded, it sent powerful sound waves into the holes.
| Read More » World's Biggest Trove of Gold Built by Ancient 'Secret Agents'  | The new theory may explain why there's a string of gold beds in the Witwatersrand basin, near Johannesburg, South Africa, that collectively make up 40 percent of all of the gold that has ever been, or ever will be, dug out of the ground, said study author Christoph Heinrich, a geologist at the ETH Zurich in Switzerland. "The single biggest gold deposit in that string of deposits is still like three times bigger than the next biggest single gold deposit," called the Muruntau gold deposit, in the desert of Uzbekistan, Heinrich told Live Science.
| Read More » Prehistoric Grave May Be Earliest Example of Death During Childbirth  | Archaeologists say they've made a grim discovery in Siberia: the grave of a young mother and her twins, who all died during a difficult childbirth about 7,700 years ago. For instance, in ancient Rome, the law known as Lex Caesaria mandated that if a pregnant woman died, her baby had to be cut out her womb before she could be buried.
| Read More » Newfound 'Gospel of the Lots of Mary' Discovered in Ancient Text Anne Marie Luijendijk, a professor of religion at Princeton University, discovered that this newfound gospel is like no other. The text would have been used for divination, Luijendijk said. Read More » Ancient Earth Had Weird Chemistry: Vanilla Rocks, Lemon-Juice Soil During the worst mass extinction in Earth's history, acid rain may have at times made the ground as acidic as lemon juice, new research shows. The mass extinction at the end of the Permian period, about 250 million years ago, was the most extreme die-off in Earth's history. The highly level of acidity in the soil at the time of the extinction was revealed in the new study when researchers looked at levels of a compound called vanillin in rocks that date to that time. Normally, bacteria in the soil convert vanillin into vanillic acid, but acidic conditions hinder this process. Read More » Thin 'Bubble' Coatings Could Hide Submarines from Sonar  | When hit by sound waves, empty spaces in an elastic material can oscillate in size, "so it will dissipate a lot of energy," said lead study author Valentin Leroy, a physicist at the Université Paris Diderot in France. To simplify the problem, Leroy and his colleagues modeled the empty spaces in the elastic material as spherical bubbles, with each giving off a springy response to a sound wave that depended on its size and the elasticity of the surrounding material. This simplification helped them derive an equation that could optimize the material's sound absorption to a given sound frequency. They found that the meta-screen dissipated more than 91 percent of the incoming sound energy and reflected less than 3 percent of the sound energy.
| Read More » Samsung Gear VR: Virtual Reality Tech May Have Nasty Side Effects  | Samsung recently released its new virtual-reality headset, the Gear VR (powered by Oculus Rift), but the product comes with a foreboding list of possible health-related side effects. Samsung also says the device should not be used in a moving vehicle, although the Australian airline Qantas recently announced it will soon be providing the headsets to first-class passengers on flights. Virtual reality (VR) is becoming increasingly common in everything from entertainment to medicine to the military. Live Science reached out to Samsung, but a company spokesperson declined to comment.
| Read More » How Much Sleep Should You Get? New Recommendations Released The new guidelines, released by the National Sleep Foundation, include small changes to the recommended ranges for the amount of sleep that children and teens should get. Now, there are also specific sleep ranges for young and older adults, as well as for middle-age adults. Read More » Babies Understand Friendship, Bullies and Bystanders Babies who are just over a year old already comprehend complex social interactions — they understand what other people know and don't know, and expect them to behave accordingly, new research shows. In the new study, 13-month-olds who watched a puppet show in which one character witnessed another behaving badly expected the witness to shun the villain. Even at this young age, the babies were mostly very intrigued by the drama, said Yuyan Luo a psychologist at the University of Missouri and co-author of the study. Read More » Chimps joining new troop learn its 'words': study By Sharon Begley NEW YORK (Reuters) - Just as Bostonians moving to Tokyo ditch "grapefruit" and adopt "pamplemousse," so chimps joining a new troop change their calls to match those of their new troop, scientists reported on Thursday in the journal Current Biology. One expert on chimp vocalizations, Bill Hopkins of Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta, who was not involved in the study, questioned some of its methodology, such as how the scientists elicited and recorded the chimps' calls, but called it "interesting work." Chimps have specific grunts, barks, hoots and other vocalizations for particular foods, for predators and for requests such as "look at me," which members of their troop understand. Read More » Chimps joining new troop learn its "words" - study  | By Sharon Begley NEW YORK (Reuters) - Just as Bostonians moving to Tokyo ditch "grapefruit" and adopt "pamplemousse," so chimps joining a new troop change their calls to match those of their new troop, scientists reported on Thursday in the journal Current Biology. One expert on chimp vocalizations, Bill Hopkins of Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta, who was not involved in the study, questioned some of its methodology, such as how the scientists elicited and recorded the chimps' calls, but called it "interesting work." Chimps have specific grunts, barks, hoots and other vocalizations for particular foods, for predators and for requests such as "look at me," which members of their troop understand.
| Read More » Haunting Space Bubbles Shine in Amazing Hubble Telescope Photo  | Although the bright spot, better known as XZ Tauri, appears to be a single star, it's actually a binary star system with one of those two stars also a binary system, making a total of three stars within a single system. A similar phenomenon is occurring above and to the right of XZ Tauri, where wisps of deep red can be seen embedded within the blue clumps. When narrow gas streams from the newborn star hit an interstellar cloud, the shock of impact lights up the target, a sight better known as a Herbig-Haro (HH) object, according to a Hubble mission statement.
| Read More » Emotions, not science, rule U.S. climate change debate: study  | By Chris Arsenault ROME (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Despite a scientific consensus that human activity is causing the planet to warm up, ingrained attitudes among Americans mean policy changes on global warming are unlikely, academics said in a new study. Improving dialogue between believers and skeptics on the importance of human activity for climate change is the best way to foster consensus among ordinary people, according to the study published in the journal Nature Climate Change. "Strategies for building support for (climate) mitigation policies should go beyond attempts to improve the public's understanding of science," Ana-Maria Bliuc, a professor at Australia's Monash University who co-wrote the study, said in a statement. Instead, scientists who want action on global warming should try to change the relationship between believers and deniers, said Bliuc, a social and political psychologist.
| Read More » What Stresses Americans Out the Most?  | Money is the No. 1 stress factor for adults in the United States, topping work, family obligations and health concerns, a new survey found. The American Psychological Association (APA) commissioned the survey of more 3,000 adults from across the United States in August 2014. The poll found that 72 percent of Americans had felt stressed about money at some point during the previous month, including 22 percent who felt "extreme stress" about money during that time. Americans living in households with an annual income of less than $50,000 had higher overall stress levels than people in households earning more than $50,000 per year (5.2 vs. 4.7 out of 10 on a stress-measuring scale), according to the survey.
| Read More » Waking Beasts: Underwater Volcanoes Roused by Ice Ages  | The climate-driven rise and fall of sea level during the past million years matches up with valleys and ridges on the seafloor, suggesting ice ages influence underwater volcanic eruptions, two new studies reveal. "Surprisingly, the deep seafloor matters in the long-term climate cycle," said Maya Tolstoy, lead author of one of the studies and a marine geophysicist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York. New oceanic crust is born at underwater volcanic chains called spreading ridges, where magma (molten rock) rises to fill the gap between moving tectonic plates. These parallel volcanic ridges and valleys are some of the most visible features on Earth's ocean floor.
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