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As if octopuses, squids and other cephalopods were not already strange enough, they may have found a way to evolve that is foreign to practically all other multicellular organisms on the planet. For most animals, changes that might prove beneficial to the organism primarily occur at the beginning of their molecular production process. Mutations occur in DNA that are then transcribed into RNA; the RNA is then translated into an altered protein....

And you thought Frodo had it hard. In what is shaping up to be a battle of Tolkienian proportions, the tiny remains from Flores, Indonesia–paleoanthropology’s hobbit–have once again come under attack. Most paleoanthropologists believe that the hobbit belongs to a new species of human, Homo floresiensis. But now comes word that the specimen used to define the species–a largely complete female skeleton known as LB1–appears to have had some dental work....

With the help of a supermassive black hole and Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity, a group of researchers say they have made the first ever detection of planets outside the Milky Way galaxy. Finding planets in our galaxy is hard enough; finding them in more distant galaxies is even more challenging, the researchers said. “Even in the Milky Way, exoplanets are difficult to detect,” Xinyu Dai, an astronomer at the University of Oklahoma and a co-author on the new study, told Space....

Peter lake lies deep in a maple forest near the wisconsin-michigan border. One day in July 2008 a group of scientists and graduate students led by ecologist Stephen Carpenter of the University of Wisconsin–Madison arrived at the lake with some fish. One by one, they dropped 12 largemouth bass into the water. Then they headed for home, leaving behind sensors that could measure water clarity every five minutes, 24 hours a day....

From Quanta Magazine (find original story here). Evolution is littered with examples of opportunism. Hosts infected by viruses found new uses for the genetic material the agents of disease left behind; metabolic enzymes somehow came to refract light rays through the eye’s lens; mammals took advantage of the sutures between the skull bones to help their young pass through the birth canal; and, in the signature example, feathers appeared in fossils before the ancestors of modern birds took to the skies....

By Colleen Jenkins Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter delivered an unexpected message on Sunday to the several hundred people gathered at a Baptist church in Georgia for his Bible lesson - his latest brain scan showed no sign of cancer. Carter, 91, started treatment in August for melanoma that had spread from his liver to his brain. A previous MRI test showed the four spots of cancer that had developed on his brain were responding to treatment, he said....

Sex differences in cognitive abilities have been at the center of heated debate lately, following the now infamous comments made by Harvard president Lawrence H. Summers. New findings may fan the flames. Research on a fellow primate, the rhesus monkey, reveals a gender gap in spatial cognition, but one that it is easily overcome with training. In addition, the results indicate that males may be more susceptible than females to age-related cognitive decline....

On the southern edge of the Zimbabwe plateau in the watershed between the Zambezi and the Limpopo rivers sits the largest and loveliest archaeological site in sub-Saharan Africa. With its high conical tower, its long, curved stone walls and its cosmopolitan artifacts, Great Zimbabwe attests to the existence of a thriving city that may have dominated trade and culture throughout southern Africa sometime between the 12th and 17th centuries. Its unique architecture and sculpture–particularly the enigmatic birds carved from soapstone–bespeak a rich history, one that archaeologists continue to piece together today....

The Defense Department may be aware of the risks of climate change, but it still needs to do a better job of preparing its facilities for the effects of a warmer planet, federal watchdogs warned in a report published yesterday. One major issue: Individual military bases have taken an inconsistent approach to the threat of global warming. Investigators at the Government Accountability Office found that of the 23 installations they surveyed, eight had not followed DOD guidance in planning for extreme weather and climate change....

Having an agreeable personality might make you popular at work and lucky in love. It may also enhance your brain’s built-in painkilling powers, boosting the placebo effect. Researchers at the University of Michigan, the University of North Carolina and the University of Maryland administered standard personality tests to 50 healthy volunteers, identifying general traits such as resiliency, straightforwardness, altruism and hostility. Each volunteer then received a painful injection, followed by a placebo—a sham painkiller....

Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 Part 4 and Part 5 of the Special Report ANNISTON, Ala. – The Rev. Thomas Long doesn’t have neighbors on Montrose Avenue anymore. Everyone is gone. Widespread chemical contamination from a Monsanto plant was discovered in this quiet city in the Appalachian foothills back in the 1990s. In West Anniston, behind Long’s home, a church was fenced off, and men in “moon suits” cleaned the site for weeks....

Few things on our planet connect us like precipitation. The storm that drops snow in the mountains of Tennessee one day can bring rain to the plains of Spain a week later. Yet there hasn’t been a way to effectively monitor all the precipitation across the globe at once, let alone create a vertical profile from the clouds to the ground. All that changed last year, though, when NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency launched the last piece of the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission, a constellation of at least 12 satellites that give an unprecedented view of global precipitation available in near real time....

By Ewen Callaway of Nature magazineBefore committing suicide at the age of 22, an anonymous man with schizophrenia donated a biopsy of his skin cells to research. Reborn as neurons, these cells may help neuroscientists to unpick the disease he struggled with from early childhood.Experiments on these cells, as well as those of several other patients, are reported today in Nature. They represent the first of what are sure to be many mental illnesses ‘in a dish’, made by reprogramming patients’ skin cells to an embryonic-like state from which they can form any tissue type....

Mallorca, Spain’s largest island, is not just a desirable place for a Mediterranean vacation; it’s also a treasure trove of the geologic record. That’s because of coastal caves that precisely record in stone formations sea level thanks to the island’s long-term geologic stability; it has been relatively unaffected by tectonics or glacial uplift or subsidence. Plus, these caves have a series of formations, known as speleothems, like stalagmites, scattered at various levels, both above and below present-day sea level, thereby offering a record in the carbonate crust left on them by the lapping waters of sea level over time....

Got motivation? Without it, the long, difficult hours of practice that elevate some people above the rest are excruciating. But where does such stamina come from, and can we have some, too? Psychologists have identified three critical elements that support motivation, all of which you can tweak to your benefit. Autonomy Whether you pursue an activity for its own sake or because external forces compel you, psychologists Edward L. Deci and Richard M....

Exercising three times a week for about 30 minutes each session has been shown to cut cardiac morbidity and mortality by more than 10 percent, explains general internist Seth Feltheimer at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center. To reap maximum benefit from the exercise, your pulse has to stay above 100 beats per minute. This requires more than an average walk, “where you might often stop and start at each corner, and can’t really get a chance to get the pulse up,” he adds....

In 2001 dead porpoises with yeast-packed lungs washed up on the southeastern shore of Vancouver Island in British Columbia. The bloated organs were several times normal weight, with barely any room for air. The island’s veterinarians had never seen anything like it. Cats and dogs there were having trouble breathing, too. In cats, the disease could cause a particularly gruesome symptom: weeping holes, produced when a yeast infection ate its way through the skull....

In his time, Artemidorus Daldianus was a highly regarded man. He was a dream doctor, and in the second century A.D. his fellow Greeks considered dreams to be encoded messages from the gods. Deciphering them required an expert, with Artemidorus chief among them. Artemidorus declared that all dreams were not created equal, however. If the nocturnal visions could be explained from past events in the sleeper’s life, the good doctor wrote them off as meaningless constructions of the individual’s experiences and mental orientation; these dreams were not secrets of the gods....

Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from Mark Hertsgaard’s book, Hot: Living Through the Next 50 Years on Earth. Yacouba Sawadogo was not sure how old he was. With a hatchet slung over his shoulder, he strode through the woods and fields of his farm with an easy grace. But up close his beard was gray, and it turned out he had great-grandchildren, so he had to be at least sixty and perhaps closer to seventy years old....

If one thing’s for sure, it’s that I decided what breakfast cereal to eat this morning. I opened the cupboard, Iperused the options, and when I ultimately chose the Honey Bunches of Oats over the Kashi Good Friends, it came from a place of considered judgment, free from external constraints and predetermined laws. Or did it? This question—about how much people are in charge of their own actions—is among the most central to the human condition....