Adoption picnic planned

Adoption picnic planned
WARREN -- Northeast Ohio Adoption Services of Warren will have a ballpark-style picnic for area adoptive families from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. April 4 at Boardman Township Park. The cost is $3 per family, and reservations are due by March 25 by calling (800) 686-6627, Ext. 128.
Nicotine findings
Researchers have found another clue to why smoking is so addictive.
Previous research has shown that nicotine activates the brain's reward system, causing release of the pleasure-producing brain chemical dopamine.
Working with rat brain tissue, Daniel McGehee of the University of Chicago and colleagues found that nicotine also disables a regulatory mechanism that limits the pleasure system.
"As a result, the reward system is turned on right away and it keeps sending reward signals for 60 minutes even though the nicotine levels drop off 15 minutes after smoking," said McGehee, who reported the findings in Neuron.
Inflated biodiversity?
Life on Earth may be far less diverse than had been thought, according to a new analysis.
John Alroy of the University of California at Santa Barbara analyzed 4,861 North American fossil mammal species and found that, based on what has happened historically, as many as one-third end up being duplicates or invalid for some reason.
Based on that, Alroy calculated that estimates of biodiversity may be inflated by as much as 32 percent to 44 percent, Alroy reported in the March 19 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. And if that's the case, the total number of species on the planet could be 3.5 million to 10.5 million, compared with the current estimate of 5 million to 15 million.