Like most government spending programs, once environmental lobbyists got their way and renewable ethanol biofuels became mandated and subsidized, they have been difficult to eliminate.

Perhaps the news that blending more ethanol into fuel to supposedly cut air pollution from vehicles carries a hidden risk of toxic or even explosive gases in buildings may help. 

Those problems would likely occur in buildings with cracked foundations that happen to be in the vicinity of fuel spills. Vapors that rise from contaminated groundwater can be sucked inside, according to Rice University environmental engineer Pedro Alvarez. Once there, trapped pools of methane could ignite and toxic hydrocarbons could cause health woes, he said.

Short term over-eating is no problem - just don't make a habit of it and you will be fine, according to a paper in The Journal of Physiology and thousands of years of common sense.

Some studies have said that even a few days of excess calorie intake, where you consume more calories than you burn, brings detrimental health impacts, but the new paper found that a daily bout of exercise generates vast physiological benefits even when you consume thousands of calories more than you are burning. Exercise clearly does a lot more than simply reduce the energy surplus. 

Astronomers have discovered huge active plumes containing water vapour being released from the surface of Jupiter's moon Europa. 

Jupiter's moon Europa has been a focus of extraterrestrial research for some time now as there were clear indications that it harbors a liquid ocean beneath its icy crust. Lorenz Roth of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas and Joachim Saur of the University of Cologne have used the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to prove that there is water vapor erupting near its south pole.

The water plumes are in comparison to earth geysers immensely large and reach heights of approximately 200 km. Europa has a circumference of 3200 km and is thereby comparable in size with the Moon.

Patients receiving the widely used anesthesia drug etomidate for surgery may be at increased risk or mortality and cardiovascular events, according to a study in Anesthesia&Analgesia which adds to safety concerns over etomidate's use as an anesthetic and sedative drug.

The study assessed the risk of adverse outcomes in patients receiving etomidate for induction of anesthesia. Rates of death and cardiovascular events in about 2,100 patients receiving etomidate were compared to those in a matched group of 5,200 patients receiving induction with a different intravenous anesthetic, propofol. All patients had severe but non-critical medical conditions— ASA physical status III or IV—and were undergoing noncardiac surgery.

Combining two innovative technologies, a team of engineers have made steps toward a better recipe for synthetic replacement cartilage in joints. Farshid Guilak, a professor of orthopedic surgery and biomedical engineering at Duke University, and Xuanhe Zhao, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and materials science, found a way to create artificial replacement tissue that mimics both the strength and suppleness of natural cartilage. 

Prisons have started to cut back on fruits and some vegetables for felons because they have discovered how to make booze with them. 

It isn't as great as it sounds. Emergency unit physicians have report severe botulism poisoning from a batch of potato-based "wine" (also known as pruno) cooked up in a Utah prison. The only thing crazier than inject botulism into your face is putting it in your stomach.