High-potency pot smokers show brain-fiber damage

People who use especially potent pot show signs ofdamage in a key part of their brain. The results, reported online November 27 in Psychological Medicine, are limited, though: The small brain scanning study doesn’t show that marijuana caused the brain abnormality — only that the two go hand-in-hand. But the findings suggest that potency matters, says study coauthor Tiago Reis Marques, a psychiatrist at King’s College London.
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A striking shoreline emerges in best images from Pluto mission

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has returned the best pictures of Pluto the world may ever see. The new images, at resolutions of about 80 meters per pixel, show a striking shoreline, where smooth plains of nitrogen ice from Pluto’s “heart” rub up against water ice mountains several kilometers high. The jumbled-up rubble at the base of the ice mountains helps confirm team members’ theories that the mountains are, in fact, giant icebergs that have moved around on more plastic layers of nitrogen ice below. The spacecraft made its closest approach to the dwarf planet in July. But because of the great distances and the spacecraft’s low-power antenna, some of the best data are reaching Earth only now.

The brains of men and women aren’t really that different, study finds

In the mid-19th century, researchers claimed they could tell the sex of an individual just by looking at their disembodied brain. But a new study finds that human brains do not fit neatly into “male” and “female” categories. Indeed, all of our brains seem to share a patchwork of forms; some that are more common in males, others that are more common in females, and some that are common to both. The findings could change how scientists study the brain and even how society defines gender.

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As Paris talks open, meet a geoscientist who has attended every major climate negotiatio

As the world today kicks off the 21st, and perhaps biggest, meeting of nations who have joined the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Jonathan Pershing is aiming to keep his perfect attendance record.

Pershing, a Ph.D. geologist turned climate diplomacy wonk, has attended every past conference of the parties (COP) to the framework agreement. Now, he’s attending the Paris meeting, known as COP-21, as a top technical advisor on energy matters to the U.S. delegation.

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Draft Declaration on Human Rights and Climate Change

The Global Network for the Study of Human Rights and the Environment (GNHRE), a major network of international human rights scholars, has issued around the world in a Draft Declaration on Human Rights and Climate Change (The Declaration) ahead of the Paris Climate Summit beginning on 30 November. The Declaration outlines a crucial shift in the way that states should respond to climate change. The Declaration is a response to the unsustainable status quo. Combining new thinking and existing international human rights law, the Declaration presents an alternative formulation of rights that foregrounds human rights while simultaneously protecting the rights of non-human persons and living systems from climate harms. 

The GNHRE is a network of multidisciplinary scholars from around the world, dedicated to tackling human and environmental challenges, including climate change. The group includes numerous world- renowned environmental-human rights scholars and drafted the Declaration as a clarion call to governments to address the human rights implications of climate change.

To view the Declaration, please click here or go to : http://gnhre.org/gnhre-draft-declaration/

Science Week 2.0: Design Your Future

2015 marks 20 years of Science Week; a national, annual event that celebrates the fascinating worlds of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)
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Scientists think they just found the most important planet outside our solar system

A small planet, just a bit bigger than Earth, has been spotted in our stellar neighborhood, just 39 light-years away.
Known as GJ 1132b, it is the closest rocky exoplanet to have ever been found, and astronomers say it could provide our most in-depth look yet at an alien world not so different than our own
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