Hasta La Gadget!

Just a few days after the one-year anniversary of the death of James Gandolfini, we have the international trailer for the actor’s final film, “The Drop.” Co-starring Tom Hardy and Noomi Rapace, Gandolfini’s final bow will feel familiar as he plays an ex-con trying to straighten his life out — his cousin, played by Hardy, being in the same boat — who finds himself in trouble with some gangsters after his bar is robbed.

“A new Gandolfini was emerging,” director Michaël Roskam told USA Today. “Unfortunately, we are not going to be able to see more of it. But I am happy that we had this beautiful glimpse.”

“The Drop” is based on a short story written by Dennis Lehane, who also wrote “Mystic River,” “Shutter Island” and “Gone Baby Gone.” Watch the trailer below.

In 2005, a small Palo Alto-based mobile software company called Android Inc. was quietly folded into Google’s growing empire. The acquisition led to the release of the company’s first-ever “Google phone” three years later: the T-Mobile G1 (or HTC…

Last week Mary Steenburgen announced via Twitter that she was joining the cast of “Orange Is the New Black” for Season 3.

In a tweet from June 12, which has since been deleted, the actress wrote, “Very excited to go to my first wardrobe fitting of OITNB! Will I be in orange or black?:)” It was a mystery whether or not Steenburgen would be joining the inmates or the Correction Officers. Now we know that her character is someone else entirely, and it’s perfect for her. According to TV Line, Steenburgen will be playing Mendez, a.k.a. Pornstache’s mom, and we couldn’t picture anyone else better to mother the much despised “mustachioed sh*t.”

Why do we think she’s so great for the part? She’s already mothered Will Ferrell‘s outrageous and temperamental Bennan in “Step Brothers,” so she can probably deal with Pornstache. After all, we bet he’s going to really need his mom in Season 3 after what happened this season.

[via TV Line]

Sauropods are best known for being the largest dinosaurs ever to roam Earth. But a new study of these ancient creatures focuses on a surprising fact: Some sauropods were actually quite small.

The conclusion is based on the discovery of the fossil remains of the smaller-than-average sauropod dubbed Europasaurus holgeri in 2006 in a quarry in northern Germany.The specimens were approximately 20 feet (6 meters) long and are believed to have supported dinosaurs weighing less than a ton each. While these dimensions may seem large by today’s standards — the animals were bigger than the average horse — they belonged to animals that were significantly smaller than other sauropods.

Scientists originally thought the fossils may have belonged to juvenile dinosaurs. But the new study determined that the fossils actually belonged to adult dwarf dinosaurs, said lead researcher Martin Sander, a professor of vertebrate paleontology at the Steinmann Institute of Geology, Mineralogy and Paleontology at the University of Bonn in Germany. [Paleo-Art: See Vivid Illustrations of Dinosaurs]

The dwarfism exhibited in this rare discovery of sauropod fossils is a result of what’s known as island or insular dwarfism. This gradual shrinking of a large species over several generations has also affected other animals — like elephants and hippopotamuses — living in isolated and cramped quarters.

This particular group of sauropods, Europasaurus holgeri, lived about 150 million years ago in what is now Europe. But during the Late Jurassic period, Europe was submerged in a shallow sea, and most of the animals that lived there inhabited small islands. Over time, Europasaurus evolved to better survive in its island habitat by shrinking, the researchers said.

To make their case, the researchers focused on the details of the anatomy of these diminutive dinosaur specimens. They found that, in the case of Europasaurus, two different sizes of dwarf dinosaurs — a small dwarf and a large dwarf — evolved during the Late Jurassic, Sander told Live Science in an email.

“Bone microstructure tells us that the largest of the two kinds of Europasaurus was fully grown,” Sander said. “To find this out, we had to grind samples of Europasaurus bones into thin slices, about one-twentieth of a millimeter in thickness.”

At this thickness, Sander explained, the bone becomes translucent and can be studied with a microscope, allowing researchers to examine the bones’ microstructure. The researchers also examined the shapes of the skull bones to determine each specimen’s morphological ontogenetic stage (MOS), or where that animal is over the course of its development.

Sander said both the MOS and the specimen’s microstructure help researchers determine how old a dinosaur was when it died.

Once the researchers determined that the specimens they were studying did, indeed, belong to the dwarf dinosaur Europasaurus and not juvenile sauropods, one important question remained: How did Europasaurus get so small?

“To be a dwarf as a dinosaur, your ancestors have to have been giants,” Sander said. “In the case of Europasaurus, this is not difficult to check because, with very few exceptions, all of those long-necked sauropods were giants. The question then becomes how to shrink your dinosaur.”

Sander said there were two ways dinosaurs could shrink over the course of evolution: Either a dinosaur could stop growing earlier than its ancestor — after five years instead of 20, for instance — or a dinosaur could grow for the same time period (say 20 years), but did so more slowly, at half the speed.

In both cases, a dinosaur would end up being significantly smaller than its ancestor, Sander said. In the case of Europasaurus, both processes seem to have been at work. However, his team was not able to determine which process was dominant.

Another mystery left unresolved by the University of Bonn study is that of the origins of the two different “forms” of Europasaurus — what Sander refers to as “a small dwarf and a large dwarf.” These two sizes of Europasaurus could represent an instance of sexual dimorphism, Sander said, in which males and females of the species are formed or sized differently. However, scientists aren’t ruling out another possibility: that the fossils from the 2006 discovery represent two distinct Europasaurus species, separated either by time or by distance.

The study was published recently in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology.

Follow Elizabeth Palermo on Twitter @techEpalermo, Facebookor Google+. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Originally published on Live Science.

• In Images: A Baby Dinosaur Unearthed
• Image Gallery: Dinosaur Daycare
• Dwarf Gallery: Fossils of a Little Mammoth

Copyright 2014 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Does a good night’s sleep really boost your performance the following day? A new study not only suggests that it can but also shows how big a difference the extra zzz’s make.

For the study, researchers from Ghent and KU Leuven universities in Belgium surveyed 621 first-year university students about their sleep habits during exam period. The researchers then compared the survey results with how the students did on their exams. What was the finding?

“All else equal, students who generally got a good night’s sleep performed better on exams,” study co-author Dr. Stijn Baert, a researcher at Ghent University, said in a written statement.

No surprise there.

But the grades of students who slept seven hours each night during the exam period were nearly 10 percent higher than those of students who got less sleep. Students who extended their sleep duration from six to seven hours saw an average increase of 1.7 points (on a scale of 20) for each exam. And, yes, the researchers accounted for differences in the students’ study habits as well as their health and socioeconomic backgrounds.

But why might a good night’s sleep translate into better academic performance? Because “new knowledge is integrated into our existing knowledge base while we sleep,” Dr. Baert said in the statement.

Of course, adequate sleep has other benefits. Previous studies showed that more sleep not only boosts thinking ability but also can improve athletic performance. Medical experts say adults should get seven to eight hours of sleep each day.

The study was published in a discussion paper for the Institute for the Study of Labor in Germany on June 14, 2014.