Humans

Animals

Junk food turns rats into addicts

Bacon, cheesecake and Ho Hos elicit addictive behavior in rats similar to the behavior of rats addicted to heroin.

Earth

Johnstown Flood matched volume of Mississippi River

A modern survey of terrain determines flow rate of the 1889 flood that was one of America's deadliest disasters.

Life

People can control their Halle Berry neurons

Researchers pinpoint individual brain cells that respond to particular people and objects.

Anthropology

Droughts gave early humans survival skills for later travels

Droughts were actually good times for early humans, helping to develop skills for survival in other parts of the world, Lisa Grossman reports in a blog from the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing's New Horizons in Science meeting.

Agriculture

Report tallies hidden energy costs

The average retail cost of U.S. coal-fired electricity was 9 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2007 (the most recent year for which data are available). But there are health and environmental costs of that power that consumers don’t pay, at least as part of their electric bill. According to a new report, accounting for those costs would double the true cost of shooting some electrons through the nation's power grid.

Health & Medicine

Exercise helps brains bounce back

Study of rhesus monkeys shows running protects dopamine neurons from death.

Agriculture

Update: U.S. swine infected with swine flu

Well, it's official. Over the weekend, Agriculture Department scientists found evidence that at least one pig exhibited at this year's Minnesota state fair was infected with the pandemic H1N1 strain of swine flu.

Agriculture

Of swine flu, pigs and a state fair

To date, federal monitoring has yet to turn up any U.S. pigs infected with the killer swine flu strain known as H1N1. But Agriculture Department Secretary Tom Vilsack announced yesterday that his agency’s veterinary labs would be reexamining whether any of the apparently healthy pigs exhibited last August 16 to Sept. 1 at the Minnesota state fair might have been infected with the virus. Why? “An outbreak of 2009 pandemic H1N1 influenza occurred in a group of children housed in a dormitory at the fair at the same time samples were collected from the pigs,” USDA notes

Psychology

Mental disorders don’t hinder headache treatment

Headache patients may benefit from drug treatment even if they also suffer from depression or anxiety.

Climate

Carbon emissions: Trend improves, but …

Sometimes what’s bad for the economy can be good for the planet. Or so argued Lester Brown, president of Earth Policy Institute, yesterday. This environmental trend spotter pointed to several developments that may have escaped our attention as the global economy alternately sputtered and entered periods of freefall throughout the past 18 months. Trend one: U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide, a leading greenhouse gas, have taken a tumble.

Chemistry

Tongue’s sour-sensing cells taste carbonation

A protein splits carbon dioxide to give fizz its unique flavor.

Health & Medicine

Brain speed-reads using just one part

Scientists measure the speed of recognizing, manipulating and producing speech in human brains.