Washington, October 31: A team of University of Kent researchers has shown that the selection of male or female group leaders may depend upon specific situations that the members face.

Psychologists Mark Van Vugt and Brian R. Spisak made volunteers participate in an investment game to see whether gender influences the selection of group leaders during various group competition situations.

Each volunteer was given six dollars, any of that amount could be invested into a group fund, with the volunteer keeping the rest for themselves. The participants were told that they would receive a bonus if the group fund exceeded a certain amount.

Washington, Oct 31: Republican presidential hopeful John McCain’s supporters are hoping for a “Bradley effect” bounce on the Election Day, but some pollsters and strategists say they may have another thing coming that is: Bandwagon effect.

Washington, Oct 31: Memories often persist in our minds. Now, researchers from Duke University Medical Centre claim to have identified the machinery that helps make the reminiscences.

Plasticity, the ability of the brain to precisely rearrange the connections between its nerve cells, is the framework for learning and forming memories.

The researchers have identified a missing-link molecule that helps to explain the process of plasticity. They hope that the new find might lead to targeted therapies.

Washington, October 31: Exposure to famine prior to birth may lead to epigenetic changes that may affect a person''s health into midlife, according to a new study.

Researchers from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and the Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands say that their findings show trickle-down effect from pregnant women to the DNA of their unborn children, and the timeframe over which such early damage can operate.

Reporting their findings online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, the researchers claim that theirs is the first study to show that early-life environmental conditions can cause epigenetic changes in humans that persist throughout life.

Washington, Oct 31: A new study that documented unusually strong vertical "bouncing" motions during a magnitude 6.9 earthquake in Japan in June 2008, which was four times stronger than Earth''s gravity.

According to a report in National Geographic News, the study suggests that side-to-side shaking during earthquakes can also be accompanied by up-and-down jolts, which may increase the threat to buildings and other structures.

Washington, Oct 31: A new research has determined that ancient meteorites that are among the oldest rocks ever found, still contain magnetic records about the very early history of planets.

MIT planetary scientist Benjamin P. Weiss did the research.

Weiss and his five co-authors examined pieces of three meteorites called angrites, which are among the most ancient rocks known.

The analysis showed that surprisingly, during the formation of the solar system, when dust and rubble in a disk around the sun collided and stuck together to form ever-larger rocks and eventually the planets we know today, even objects much smaller than planets — just
160 kilometers across or so — were large enough to melt almost completely.