Unsung heroes

Guardian: "Unsung Heroes: What made old singles so great? Session musicians, that's what. So why are those players finding their royalties disappearing?

Scandinavians are descended from Stone Age immigrants

EurekAlert: "Today's Scandinavians are not descended from the people who came to Scandinavia at the conclusion of the last ice age but, apparently, from a population that arrived later, concurrently with the introduction of agriculture. This is one conclusion of a new study straddling the borderline between genetics and archaeology, which involved Swedish researchers and which has now been published in the journal Current Biology."

Balance Organs Affect Brain Blood Flow

ScienceDaily: "The organs of the inner ear have a direct effect on brain blood flow, independent of blood pressure and carbon dioxide levels in the blood. Researchers used a series of human centrifuge experiments to investigate the effects of stimulation of the otoliths and semi-circular canals on cerebrovascular response."

RU Kidding? Research Finds That Chatspeak Has No Impact On Children's Spelling Ability

ScienceDaily: "This will prolly comes as a bit of a shock to UR system, but findings from a group of researchers show that language commonly used in instant messaging has no effect on your child's spelling abilities. If anything, says a study author, using language variations commonly used in instant messaging and texting is actually a good sign."

New NIST Nano-ruler Sets Some Very Small Marks

ScienceDaily: "NIST has issued a new ruler, and even for an organization that routinely deals in superlatives, it sets some records. Designed to be the most accurate commercially available 'meter stick' for the nano world, the new measuring tool boasts uncertainties below a femtometer. That's 0.000 000 000 000 001 meter, or roughly the size of a neutron."

'McDonalization' of frogs

EurekAlert: "Everyone knows that frogs are in trouble. But a recent analysis of frog surveys done at eight Central American sites shows the situation is worse than thought. Under pressure from an invasive fungus, the frogs in this biodiversity hot spot are undergoing 'a vast homogenization.' 'We're witnessing the McDonaldization of the frog communities,' comments the lead author of the new study."

'Lies my parents told me'

EurekAlert: "Parents say that honesty is the best policy, but they regularly lie to their children as a way of influencing their behavior and emotions, finds new research from the University of Toronto and the University of California, San Diego."

Waterboarding Doesn't Work, Scientists Say

Wired: "Painful interrogation techniques like waterboarding don't work, according to a new review of the psychological literature. The belief that 'enhanced interrogation' produces valuable intelligence information is just 'folk neurobiology,' the lead researcher says."

New Drake Equation To Quantify Habitability?

ScienceDaily: "Researchers are laying the groundwork for a new equation that could mathematically quantify a habitat’s potential for hosting life, in a similar way to how the Drake equation estimates the number of intelligent extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way."

Who's Afraid of the Flu?

Time: "For the first time in history, the world is fighting a pandemic flu before it becomes a full-fledged catastrophe. But the real battle is the one in our heads"