Another alarming study regarding global warming has surfaced, revealing that tropical species are also in trouble. According to the UCLA and the University of Washington, warming can cause population of animals and insects in the tropics to decline, which adversely hurts the ecosystem. See the full article for details.

What would you say if I were to ask you to do a good deed in exchange for fairness? Sure, money and chocolate may be more recognizable, tangible rewards. A recent study, however, suggests that the human brain tends to treat fairness as a reward as well. Fair enough. Turn to the full article after the jump for more scientific details.

Love, the prevalent emotion during Valentine's Day which just passed, is still very mysterious to some. Researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) conducted a study to find out if love is really blind, and the results say yes. Check out the full article to learn more.

A new study has revealed that over-the-counter painkillers such as aspirin and ibuprofen could help reduce a person's risk of getting Parkinson's disease by as much as 60 percent. These painkillers, known as nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAID), were tested on 579 men and women, half of whom had Parkinson's. Regular users of non-aspirin NSAIDs reduced their risk by as much as 60 percent, while women who used aspirin regularly reduced their risk by 40 percent. Read more at the full article.

A recent study at the University of California Los Angeles has reaffirmed that the hormone leptin can work wonders for dangerously obese people. The hormone helps the extremely overweight by influencing their ability to control food cravings.

Leptin was originally discovered in the early 90's and was proven effective in mice. When injected into the rodents, they immediately lost interest in eating and allowed them to lose a lot of their body weight.

Humans, however, showed limited response to leptin. Some people shed off half their pounds, while some barely exhibited any changes. Now researchers are beginning to better understand why this is the case.

Studies have shown that a rare genetic deficiency creates the condition in some patients where their bodies are unable to produce the said hormone. In people who don't have leptin in their systems, controlling cravings for high-calorie food is a very tall order.

"The findings suggest that leptin strengthens the executive centers," says UCLA study head Edythe London as she demonstrated the effects of leptin in human brains. She explained that when low-leptin people responded very well to hormone injections and were less tempted to eat when shown pictures of food.

She concludes "while they were off leptin they got really hungry when they saw pictures of high-calorie food, and that was associated with high activation in a part of the brain that is related to food craving."

Coffee was first discovered in the Middle East when a shepherd allegedly noticed goats munching on coffee beans and acted funny afterwards. As the story goes, the shepherd brewed the means and found out that it not only tasted good, it also helped fight drowsiness. Another story tells the tale of Pope Clement VIII blessing the drink because it kept the monks awake during mass.

These tales may never be confirmed, but what scientists from UCLA and Harvard are sure of is the fact that the drink has a lot of great health benefits. When taken in moderate quantities, coffee will reduce chances of getting Parkinson's and Alzheimer's by 50 percent and lower the risks of type 2 diabetes. Reports also suggest that cancer can be avoided with regular intake.

According to Dr. Rob van Dam (not the pro wrestler) of the Harvard Medical school, an estimated 171 million people around the world have type 2 diabetes. The figure is expected to balloon up to some 366 million in 20 years if left unchecked. Dr. Van Dam suggests taking 3-5 cups of coffee every day to bring the figure down.

Dr. Lenore Arab agrees, and says coffee has a lot of nutrients that aid in enhancing the body's ability to maintain homeostasis. Chlorogenic acid, caffeine, magnesium, potassium, vitamin B3, trigonelline, and lignans are present in good amounts in every cup, making the drink a good health supplement of sorts.

Studies on its effects on cancer, whether preventive or risk-inducing, are as of yet still inconclusive. The evidence on ovarian, breast and prostate cancer is still limited and are awaiting more research to verify claims.

A vast study conducted by UCLA produced surprising results - smoking marijuana, even regularly and heavily, does not lead to lung cancer. The leader of the UCLA team, Dr. Donald Tashkin, said that they "hypothesized that there would be a positive association between marijuana use and lung cancer and that the association would be more positive with heavier use...What we found instead was no association at all, and even a suggestion of some protective effect."

Earlier works have found out that marijuana contain cancer-causing chemicals, potentially as harmful as those in tobacco. But they also found out that it also contains the chemical THC, which may kill aging cell and keep them from becoming cancerous.

The study involved 1,200 people in the L.A. area who had lung, neck, or head cancer, and another 1,040 people without cancer matched by age, sex, and neighborhood. The study was limited to people younger than 60 because those older folks were generally not exposed to marijuana use during their youth.

The group was then asked about their lifetime use of weed, cigarettes, and alcohol. Tashkin and his team found out that the very heavy marijuana users (who lit up more than 22,000 times) showed no increased incidence of lung, neck, or head cancer. When asked to explain why other studies found links between marijuana use and cancer, he mentions that most of these previous studies used smaller human studies and lab animals.

Hickory dickory dock, the mouse ran up the brain... UCLA researchers have uncovered some details of how the brain records the passage of time, PhysOrg reports, and these details could reveal how brains truly work.

Remember that report on "How Brains Weave Memory"? (Must have been a scene of How to Make an American Quilt that didn't make the cut.)

Based on this theory of brain time, the brain might also be adding a "time stamp" to every sensory processing your cranium does. The explanation is likened to ripples in the water: drop a pebble, ripples form, and these ripples act like a "signature" of the time the pebble entered the water. The further the ripples travel, the longer the time.

Same thing with the brain. The time a brain cell is triggered is like the pebble being thrown into the lake: it sets off a ripple of reactions among neighboring brain cells and connections. The brain, it seems, is capable of interpreting these ripples as the passage of time. We don't have an internal clock as we do an internal stopwatch.

These findings bear significance, not only in the understanding of the architecture of the human brain, but also in applications where time is involved, such as speech recognition (pronounciation is a factor of time, too) and musical apprehension. By the way, it's been forty-plus minutes since I started writing this article. And I didn't even have to check the clock.

Not familiar with the Freman Stillsuit? Didn't bother to read Dune? Well this development by researchers at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science might just get us a few steps closer to Frank Herbert's water recycling suit.

The Team of researchers have apparently developed a new reverse osmosis membrane that promises to reduce the cost of seawater desalination and waste-water reclamation.

Reverse osmosis desalination basically uses extremely high pressure to force saline or polluted waters through the pores of a semi-permeable membrane. Water passes through, salt-ions and other impurities don't. Presto. Purified recycled water.

Developed by civil and environmental engineering assistant professor Eric Hoek and his research team, the membrane uses a cross-linked matrix of polymers and engineered nano-particles designed to draw in water ions but repel nearly all contaminants. The filter works at nano-scale.

Moreover, because the membranes repel particles that might ordinarily stick to its surface, the new membranes foul more slowly than conventional ones. The result is a process that is just as effective as current methods but more energy efficient and potentially much less expensive.

Initial tests suggest the new membranes have up to twice the productivity — or consume 50 percent less energy — reducing the total expense of desalinated water by as much as 25 percent. Yes, because of the high pressures required, this technology is currently applicable at an industrial level. But what if? Perhaps in the future we'll all be drinking our urine and our feces, just like the Fremen.

Let's step away from the usual writing style and add some righteous fury, focusing on something that everyone hates: harassment.

Here's the situation: Dario Ringach, a Neurobiology professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, is a researcher who uses primates for testing. Animal rights groups, such as the UCLA Primate Freedom Project and the Animal Liberation Front, pressured him to stop testing on the said primates, even if he was observing the necessary ethical guidelines put forth by the National Research Council. Eventually, he announced that he was giving up primate research as a result of the pressure.

How did these groups do it?

By posting his name and phone number on the internet, which led to a barrage of calls and emails from complete strangers, as well as instances of picketing in front of his house. In the end, he acceded to their "request," and emailed different animal rights groups with the statement, "You win. Please don't bother my family anymore." referring to his entire family, children included, who went under the microscope of public condemnation.

The last straw may have been when the Animal Liberation Front took credit for attempting to place a Molotov cocktail on the doorstep of a fellow researcher, Lynn Fairbanks. However, they made the mistake of putting the explosive in front of Fairbanks' elderly neighbor's house. The results would have been disastrous had it exploded.

The UCLA itself doesn't approve of the behavior of these groups, who have taken protests to an unreasonable extreme. In a statement by Roberto Peccei, UCLA's Vice Chancellor for Research, he deplored activists' actions:

"In recent years, however, animal rights extremists have escalated their activities in a disturbing manner. They post home addresses and phone numbers of researchers on the Internet, along with inflammatory images and slanderous rhetoric about faculty members...

...Although UCLA is an institution that encourages free speech, we condemn and deplore such tactics in the strongest possible terms. Using violence and physical threats to advocate policy or advance a political view is unacceptable in a civilized, democratic society.

Whether or not one agrees with animal testing, there may never be an excuse for harassing people whose views disagree with one's own. When a Molotov actually goes off because of this, be sure that isn't harassment anymore either.

It's terrorism.