dryriver writes: CNN has put up a slickly produced and somewhat alarming 360-degree browser video experience that allows the viewer to see firsthand what arctic melt looks like in Greenland. The video takes the viewer to the "Ground Zero" of climate change. Throughout the 7-minute long video, the viewer can interactively look around the locations visited. Voice narration and various scientists featured in the video explain what is happening in the Arctic, what causes the melting, and what the potential consequences are for the world.

A real-life case study, published on New England Journal of Medicine, documents the ethical dilemma that a Florida hospital faced after a 70-year-old unresponsive patient arrived at the hospital. The medical staff, the journal notes, was taken aback when it discovered the words "DO NOT RESUSCITATE" tattooed onto the man's chest. Furthermore, the word "NOT" was underlined with his signature beneath it. The patient had a history of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes mellitus, and atrial fibrillation. Confused and alarmed, the medical staff chose to ignore the apparent DNR request -- but not without alerting the hospital's ethics team, which had a different take on the matter. From the report: We initially decided not to honor the tattoo, invoking the principle of not choosing an irreversible path when faced with uncertainty. This decision left us conflicted owing to the patient's extraordinary effort to make his presumed advance directive known; therefore, an ethics consultation was requested. He was placed on empirical antibiotics, received intravenous fluid resuscitation and vasopressors, and was treated with bilevel positive airway pressure. After reviewing the patient's case, the ethics consultants advised us to honor the patient's do not resuscitate (DNR) tattoo. They suggested that it was most reasonable to infer that the tattoo expressed an authentic preference, that what might be seen as caution could also be seen as standing on ceremony, and that the law is sometimes not nimble enough to support patient-centered care and respect for patients' best interests. A DNR order was written. Subsequently, the social work department obtained a copy of his Florida Department of Health "out-of-hospital" DNR order, which was consistent with the tattoo. The patient's clinical status deteriorated throughout the night, and he died without undergoing cardiopulmonary respiration or advanced airway management.

Science_afficionado writes: Are you a cat lover? A dog lover? If so, you may be interested in the first scientific study to actually count the number of cortical neurons in the brains of a number of carnivores, including cats and dogs. Bottom line: Dogs have about twice as many of these "little grey cells" as cats. These "little gray cells" are associated with thinking, planning and complex behavior. The study found that dogs have about 530 million cortical neurons while cats have about 250 million. (For comparison, the human brain has 16 billion.) Another interesting discovery was that carnivores have about the same ratio of neurons to brain size as that of herbivores, "suggesting that there is just as much evolutionary pressure on the herbivores to develop the brain power to escape from predators as there is on carnivores to catch them," reports Vanderbilt University. "The study's findings also challenge the prevailing view that domesticated animals have smaller brains than their wild cousins. The ratios of brain size to body weight of the domestic species they analyzed -- ferret, cat and dog -- did not scale in a significantly different manner from those of their wild relatives -- mongoose, raccoon, hyena, lion and brown bear."

The results of the study are described in a paper titled "Dogs have the most neurons, though not the largest brain: Trade-off between body mass and number of neurons in the cerebral cortex of large carnivoran species" accepted for publication in the open access journal Frontiers in Neuroanatomy.

Kekke writes: Lots of buzz around this. Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov took routine samples from the outside of the International Space Station during a spacewalk. These samples were analyzed and found to contain bacteria that must have come from somewhere other than Earth or the ISS itself. "Bacteria that had not been there during the launch of the ISS module were found on the swabs," Mr. Shkaplerov told TASS Russian News Agency. "So they have flown from somewhere in space and settled on the outside hull." He made it clear that "it seems, there is no danger," and that scientists are doing more work to find out what they are. The Independent writes, "Finding bacteria that came from somewhere other than Earth would be one of the biggest breakthroughs in the history of science -- but much more must be done before such a claim is made."