Having kids believe there's a jolly man in a red suit who visits on Christmas Eve isn't detrimental, although some parents can feel they're outright lying to their children, according to a new analysis by Serge Larivee. "When they learn the truth, children accept the rules of the game and even go along with their parents in having younger children believe in Santa," says Larivee, a psycho-education professor at the Université de Montréal. "It becomes a rite of passage in that they know they are no longer babies."
Chocolate, Wine And Tea Improve Brain Performance:
All that chocolate might actually help finish the bumper Christmas crossword over the seasonal period. According to Oxford researchers working with colleagues in Norway, chocolate, wine and tea enhance cognitive performance.
Unusual Microbial Ropes Grow Slowly In Cave Lake:
Deep inside the Frasassi cave system in Italy and more than 1,600 feet below the Earth's surface, divers found filamentous ropes of microbes growing in the cold water, according to a team of Penn State researchers.
Spotless Mind? Unwanted Memories Might Be Erasable Without Harming Other Brain Functions:
The brain acts as a computer to both store information and process that information. In a computer, separate devices perform these roles; while a hard disk stores information, the central processing unit (CPU) does the processing. But the brain is thought to perform both these functions in the same cells - neurons - leading researchers to ask if distinct molecules within the brain cells serve these different functions.
Protea Plants Help Unlock Secrets Of Species 'Hotspots':
New species of flowering plants called proteas are exploding onto the scene three times faster in parts of Australia and South Africa than anywhere else in the world, creating exceptional 'hotspots' of species richness, according to new research.
Health Monitoring With Your Cell Phone:
Cell phones have already revolutionized the way people around the world communicate and do business. Thanks to advances being made at UCLA, they are about to do the same thing for medicine.
Honey Bees On Cocaine Dance More, Changing Ideas About The Insect Brain:
In a study that challenges current ideas about the insect brain, researchers have found that honey bees on cocaine tend to exaggerate. Normally, foraging honey bees alert their comrades to potential food sources only when they've found high quality nectar or pollen, and only when the hive is in need. They do this by performing a dance, called a "round" or "waggle" dance, on a specialized "dance floor" in the hive. The dance gives specific instructions that help the other bees find the food.
Snowy Owl -- A Marine Species?:
Wildlife satellite studies could lead to a radical re-thinking about how the snowy owl fits into the Northern ecosystem. "Six of the adult females that we followed in a satellite study spent most of last winter far out on the Arctic sea ice," said Université Laval doctoral student Jean-Francois Therrien, who is working with Professor Gilles Gauthier as part of an International Polar Year (IPY) research project to better understand key indicator species of Canadian northern ecosystems.
How Gene Function Drives Natural Selection In Important Class Of Genetic Elements:
Transposons are the Clark Kents of a genome. Apparently mild-mannered and inconsequential but with sudden bursts of activity, these free-floating bits of genetic material have for millions of years been sneaking into the genetic maps of plants and animals, dramatically increasing a genome's size.
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