Research

California lawmakers are trying to resolve differences over competing proposals to host a research-and-testing center for drone aircraft that would be sanctioned by the Federal Aviation Administration. The FAA has called for competing bids to establish six research centers throughout the country to help determine the extent to which non-military drones should be allowed in the U.S. Some officials argue that there should be one unified bid from California. Ventura County has proposed hosting a facility, while a separate proposal, floated by a group calling itself California Unmanned Aircraft Systems (Cal-UAS)

Attention Facebook users: Do you "like" Mozart, science, "The Colbert Report" and curly fries? Chances are you've got a high IQ. Have you clicked the thumbs-up icon for Tyler Perry, Harley-Davidson and Lady Antebellum? Perhaps you're not quite as cerebral. What you endorse on the popular social media website may say a whole lot more about you than you intended, researchers from the University of Cambridge in Britain have found. You may not think twice about your fondness for NASCAR, "The Bachelor" and Oklahoma State University, but those affirmations fit the pattern of a person who's conservative and less open to new things, they reported Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

People tend to think of heart disease as a scourge of modern life, brought on by vices such as greasy fast food, smoking and the tendency to be a couch potato. But 21st century CT scans of 137 antique mummies gathered from three continents show that hardened arteries have probably plagued mankind for thousands of years - even in places like the Aleutian Islands, where hunter-gatherers subsisted on a heart-healthy marine diet and occasional snacks of berries. Fully a third of the mummies examined - who lived in the American Southwest and Alaska as well as Egypt and Peru as much as 5,000 years ago - appeared to have the same vascular blockages that cause heart attacks and strokes in Americans today.

Forget touchscreen and multi-touch. That stuff is old school. One day, touching your computer will only be something your parents did. We'll all chuckle about those greasy fingerprints and smudges we left on those screens, and the constant wiping off of grime from the display. No, the future of human-computer interaction will be gesture-controlled and touchless, and Microsoft Research is demonstrating that in how it's expanding the use of its Kinect. PHOTOS: Tech we want to see in 2013 Kinect's gesture control has mainly been associated with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and playing games.

First the good news: In the last 11,300 years, humans have endured a planet warmer than today's, even as they set about building their earliest civilizations. Now the bad news: That will no longer be true 87 years from now, according to scientists who have conducted a comprehensive analysis of the planet's climate history since the world's ice sheets began their most recent retreat from North America and Europe. New research into Earth's ancient climate is providing a clearer, more detailed view of how the planet's average surface temperature fluctuated over the period known as the Holocene epoch, which continues today.

Dieters may want to forget episodes of falling off the wagon, but researchers say an attentive memory for what is eaten could help people eat less at their next meals. So sitting at a movie with a bucket of popcorn holding perhaps a day's worth of calories might be a bad idea for the present and the future, the research in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition suggests. In an analysis of 24 studies , the researchers found that while distractions can lead to increased eating, that distraction is even more influential on later eating.

Adults (especially parents) often find fault with the teenage brain. But they should admit that it is a powerful learning machine--and that sometimes, the grown-ups wish they could recapture its nimbleness. New research, conducted by researchers at Yale University and published Wednesday in the journal Neuron, homes in on the genetic and chemical mechanics that could make that possible. The new research, says the study's senior author, Dr. Stephen M. Strittmatter, helps point the way to therapies that might allow victims of stroke or spinal cord damage to "set back their brain's clock" to a stage of development that would foster the rapid relearning of lost skills.

In an age when the text and the tweet can destroy a movie an hour after it opens, Hollywood market research firms are scrambling to rethink the way they help movie studios promote their films. That has created new challenges for companies such as Capstone Global Marketing and Research Inc. in Sherman Oaks, which must adapt their testing methods to the changing habits of the tech-savvy moviegoer. "None of us knows the answers," said veteran marketing strategist and researcher Catherine Paura, Capstone's co-founder.

Childhood attention deficit hyperactivity disorder frequently persists into adulthood, bringing heightened risks of additional psychiatric issues and nearly five times the risk of suicide, according to a 20-year study that followed children diagnosed with the disorder. The study, to be published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, is the most extensive to date establishing links between childhood and adult ADHD, and between adult ADHD and other mental health diagnoses. Only about 38% of those who had ADHD as children made it to age 27 without either continued ADHD symptoms or at least one other psychiatric disorder, according to the study, which was based on a sample of more than 5,000 people born between Jan. 1, 1976, and Dec. 31, 1982.

Doctors know that being chronically sleep-deprived can be hazardous to your health. Night-shift workers, college crammers and all the rest of us who get less than our fair share of zzz's are more likely to be obese and to suffer cardiovascular woes than people who get a consistent, healthful eight hours. Now scientists have some new clues about how lack of sleep translates into disease. After subjecting 26 volunteers to seven nights of insufficient shut-eye followed by a marathon all-nighter, researchers detected changes in the way hundreds of genes were expressed in their bodies.