Incomanic elements known to be toxic at low concentrations are being discharged to air and water by oilsands mining and processing according to University of Alberta (U of A) research findings being published this month in one of the world’s top scientific journals. The 13 elements being discharged include mercury, arsenic, lead, cadmium and several other metals known to be toxic at trace levels. The paper will appear in the August 30 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ( PNAS ). The results are not surprising according to corresponding author David Schindler – an internationally acclaimed researcher in the Department of Biological Sciences at the U of A – given the huge amounts of many of the same elements that the industry has reported discharging, according to Environment Canada’s National Pollutant Release Inventory.

Gamblers who think they have a “hot hand,” only to end up walking away with a loss, may nonetheless be making “rational” decisions, according to new research from University of Minnesota psychologists. The study finds that because humans are making decisions based on how we think the world works, if erroneous beliefs are held, it can result in behavior that looks distinctly irrational. This research, forthcoming in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ( PNAS ) “Early Edition,” examines the roots of a seemingly irrational human decision strategy that occurs in so-called binary choice tasks, which has perplexed researchers in economics, psychology and neuroscience for decades. In these tasks, subjects are repeatedly asked to choose between two options, with one option having a higher probability of being correct than the other (imagine a biased coin that will land on heads 70 percent of trials, and tails on 30 percent of trials). While the right strategy is to always pick the higher probability option, subjects instead choose the options in proportion to the probability of it being correct.

A new study in mice shows how social support can help minimize some of the worst physical damages to the brain caused by a heart attack. From cell death to depressive symptoms to regulation of the heart, mice that lived with a partner after a heart attack suffered less damage than did similar mice that were housed alone. “The results really get at the profound influence that the social environment can have on health after cardiac arrest,” said Greg Norman, lead author of the study and doctoral student in psychology at Ohio State University.

About 12,900 years ago, a sudden cold snap interrupted the gradual warming that had followed the last Ice Age. The cold lasted for the 1,300-year interval known as the Younger Dryas (YD) before the climate began to warm again. In North America, large animals known as megafauna, such as mammoths, mastodons, saber-tooth tigers and giant short-faced bears, became extinct. The Paleo-Indian culture known as the Clovis culture for distinctively shaped fluted stone spear points abruptly vanished, eventually replaced by more localized regional cultures.

By describing a new double-clawed and highly-unusual relative of Velociraptor , paleontologists have answered a long-standing question: what did the Late Cretaceous predatory dinosaurs in Europe look like? Balaur bondoc , described this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , is the first reasonably complete skeleton of a meat-eating dinosaur from the final 60 million years of the Age of Dinosaurs in Europe and provides insight into an ecosystem very different from that of today. Europe at the end of the Cretaceous was awash in higher seas and was an island archipelago dominated by animals smaller and more primitive than their relatives living on larger landmasses. “We’ve all been waiting for something like this, and the wait has yielded an interesting surprise,” says Mark Norell, chair of the Division of Paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History and one of the authors of the research paper describing the fossil.

Whether the occasion is a wedding reception or another milestone in life, the feast is a time-honored ritual in which a large meal marks a significant occasion. We know that the Romans, Greeks and Vikings did it, and today it’s still an active part of occasions such as birthdays, weddings and anniversaries. Now a University of Connecticut (UConn) anthropologist says there is new evidence that nearly 12,000 years ago, feasts were used to celebrate burial of the dead, bringing about the world’s first established communities.

I’m sure I told you that already! Older adults are more likely to have destination memory failures – fcometting who they’ve shared or not shared information with, according to a new study led by Baycrest’s Rotman Research Institute. It’s the kind of memory faux pas that can lead to awkward or embarrassing social situations and even miscommunication in the doctor’s office. Ironically, after making these memory errors older adults remain highly confident in their false beliefs. The study appears online, ahead of print publication, in the Online First Section of Psychology and Aging .