My Picks From ScienceDaily

Sheep's Sex Determined By Diet Prior To Pregnancy:

Maternal diet influences the chances of having male or female offspring. New research has demonstrated that ewes fed a diet enriched with polyunsaturated fats for one month prior to conception have a significantly higher chance of giving birth to male offspring.

Fossilized Burrows 245 Million Years Old Suggest Lizard-like Creatures In Antarctica:

For the first time paleontologists have found fossilized burrows of tetrapods -- any land vertebrates with four legs or leglike appendages -- in Antarctica dating from the Early Triassic epoch, about 245 million years ago.

Caribbean Monk Seal Gone Extinct From Human Causes, NOAA Confirms:

After a five year review, NOAA's Fisheries Service has determined that the Caribbean monk seal, which has not been seen for more than 50 years, has gone extinct -- the first type of seal to go extinct from human causes.

Complex Synapses Drove Brain Evolution:

One of the great scientific challenges is to understand the design principles and origins of the human brain. New research has shed light on the evolutionary origins of the brain and how it evolved into the remarkably complex structure found in humans.

Scientific Information Largely Ignored When Forming Opinions About Stem Cell Research:

When forming attitudes about embryonic stem cell research, people are influenced by a number of things. But understanding science plays a negligible role for many people.

Plastic Brain Outsmarts Experts: Training Can Increase Fluid Intelligence, Once Thought To Be Fixed At Birth:

Can human beings rev up their intelligence quotients, or are they stuck with IQs set by their genes at birth? Until recently, nature seemed to be the clear winner over nurture.

Film Content, Editing, And Directing Style Affect Brain Activity, Neuroscientists Show:

Using advanced functional imaging methods, New York University neuroscientists have found that certain motion pictures can exert considerable control over brain activity. Moreover, the impact of films varies according to movie content, editing, and directing style. Because the study, which appears in Projections: The Journal for Movies and Mind, offers a quantitative neuroscientific assessment of the impact of different styles of filmmaking on viewers' brains, it may serve as a valuable method for the film industry to better assess its products and offer a new method for exploring how the brain works.

Maternal Depression, Breastfeeding And A Lower Socioeconomic Status Can Affect Infants' Sleep:

Maternal depression during pregnancy, breastfeeding and a lower socioeconomic status are all associated with less infant sleep duration in the first six months of life, according to a research abstract that will be presented on June 9 at SLEEP 2008, the 22nd Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies (APSS).

Scientists Decipher The Neurological Basis Of Timely Movement:

Contrary to what one might imagine, the way in which each of us interacts with the world is not a simple matter of seeing (or touching, or smelling) and then reacting. Even the best baseball hitter eyeing a fastball does not swing at what he sees. The neurons and neural connections that make up our sensory systems are far too slow for this to work. "Everything we sense is a little bit in the past," says Richard A. Andersen of the California Institute of Technology, who has now uncovered the trick the brain uses to get around this puzzling problem.

Persistent Man-made Chemical Pollutants Found In Deep-sea Octopods And Squids:

New evidence that chemical contaminants are finding their way into the deep-sea food web has been found in deep-sea squids and octopods, including the strange-looking "vampire squid". These species are food for deep-diving toothed whales and other predators.

The Cormorant: 'Black Plague' Or An Example Of Successful Species Conservation?:

Europe requires a common management strategy for cormorants in order to reconcile nature conservation and fishing interests. An effective regulation of cormorant populations can only work at the European level, researchers from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) write in the scientific journal Environmental Conservation. Furthermore, they suggest a five-step action plan, which would start with a consensus on the real numbers of animals and end in an international management plan.

New Catfish Species Named For Museum Mail Supervisor:

He's not well known like President Bush and musician Neil Young, but Philadelphian Frank Gallagher now has something in common with them: He has a new species named after him.

Climate Change Hastens Extinction In Madagascar's Reptiles And Amphibians:

New research from the American Museum of Natural History provides the first detailed study showing that global warming forces species to move up tropical mountains as their habitats shift upward. Christopher Raxworthy, Associate Curator in the Department of Herpetology, predicts that at least three species of amphibians and reptiles found in Madagascar's mountainous north could go extinct between 2050 and 2100 because of habitat loss associated with rising global temperatures. These species, currently moving upslope to compensate for habitat loss at lower and warmer altitudes, will eventually have no place to move to.

Toxic Algal Blooms May Cause Seizures In California Sea Lions:

Scientists, reporting in the current issue of the online journal Marine Drugs, state that an increase of epileptic seizures and behavioral abnormalities in California sea lions can result from low-dose exposure to domoic acid as a fetus. The findings follow an analysis earlier this year led by Frances Gulland of the California Marine Mammal Center that showed this brain disturbance to be a newly recognized chronic disease.

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