My picks from ScienceDaily

Beating The Bullies: Changing Real-world Behavior Through Virtual Experience:

Social problems like bullying and stereotyping involve thoughts, feelings and reactions that resist change. New research shows that when students play active roles in virtual dramas their attitudes and behaviour can change.

How Big A Role Does Chance Play In The History Of Life?:

If the broad evolutionary diversification of a group of organisms were repeated by a few species in a single genus tens of millions of years after the group's initial diversification, what would that say about the roles of contingency, constraint, and adaptation?

Hybrid Vehicles That Are Even More Efficient:

One of the controllable causes of global warming is carbon dioxide (CO2) emission from burning fossil fuels. This process is precisely what enables most cars to function by means of combustion engines. In recent years, some companies in the automobile sector have brought out models that combine a standard combustion engine with an electric one. These are known as hybrids, and they produce less pollution. In his final thesis, Toni Font, who recently graduated from the ETSEIB, proposed a way to make these vehicles more efficient.

Memories May Be Formed Throughout The Day, Not Just While Sleeping:

Scientists have long thought that processes occurring during sleep were responsible for cementing the salient experiences of the day into long-term memories. Now, however, a study of scampering rats suggests that the mechanisms at work during sleep are also active while the animals are awake -- and that they encode events more accurately.

Geographic Profiling Works: Great White Sharks' Hunting Skills As Refined As Jack The Ripper's:

What do great white sharks have in common with serial killers? Refined hunting skills, according to a paper recently published in the Zoological Society of London's Journal of Zoology. Researchers have found that sharks hunt in a highly focused fashion, just like serial criminals.

54-million-year-old Skull Reveals Early Evolution Of Primate Brains:

Researchers at the University of Florida and the University of Winnipeg have developed the first detailed images of a primitive primate brain, unexpectedly revealing that cousins of our earliest ancestors relied on smell more than sight.

Bird Migration: Toxic Molecule May Help Birds 'See' North And South:

Researchers at the University of Illinois report that a toxic molecule known to damage cells and cause disease may also play a pivotal role in bird migration. The molecule, superoxide, is proposed as a key player in the mysterious process that allows birds to "see" Earth's magnetic field.