Washington, Mar 25: Researchers have found a brain region which predicts choices before we even know what they are.

The finding may explain why people re-evaluate options after making decisions.

Researchers in the March 25 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience have reported that the activity in one brain structure can predict people''s preferences.

Bangkok - A team of 30 Chinese and Thai scientists have launched a two-year joint research programme to study the impact of climate change on the monsoon variability - the annual rains that are key to regional rice production, media reports said Wednesday.

The joint research programme will investigate variability of the monsoon in the Indian Ocean and China and its likely impact on rice- growing in China, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, The Nation newspaper reported.

Washington, March 24: A cast of a ‘Hobbit’ skeleton will be publicly displayed for the first time ever at Stony Brook University’s 7th Human Evolution Symposium on April 21, thanks to the National Research and Development Centre for Archaeology in Jakarta, Indonesia.

As the debate rages on about whether Homo floresiensis – the so called “Hobbit” – fossils discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003, represent a separate human species, the symposium will bring together the researchers currently in the process of describing and analyzing the remains.

Washington, Mar 24: Researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center have shown that adult human testes cells can be turned into embryonic stem-like cells.

The researchers used a simple method to extract stem/progenitor cells from adult testes and successfully converted them back into pluripotent embryonic-like stem cells.

In their opinion, the naive cells are now potentially capable of morphing into any cell type that a body needs, from brain neurons to pancreatic tissue.

Washington, March 24: Researchers have reported that gas hydrates, known as “ice that burns”, which is derived from chunks of ice that workers collect from beneath the ocean floor, show increasing promise as an abundant, untapped source of clean, sustainable energy for the future.

These so-called “gas hydrates,” a frozen form of natural gas that bursts into flames at the touch of a match, may one day may fuel cars, heat homes, and power factories.

Lahore, Mar 24: The use of stem cells for research was allowed in Islam, but not for human cloning, said Dr. Israr Ahmed, an internationally recognised Pakistani religious scholar and founder of Tanzeem-e-Islami Quran Academy.

He was speaking on the issue at a seminar organised by the Punjab University Centre of Excellence in Molecular Biology (CEMB) on “Ethical Issues Related to Work on Stem Cells”.