Astronomers searching the atmospheres of alien planets for gases that might be produced by life, such as oxygen, ozone, or methane, may be missing the mark - because those gases can be produced non-biologically.

Methane is a carbon atom bound to four hydrogen atoms. On Earth, much of it is produced biologically - burping cows are a classic example - but it can also be made inorganically; for example, volcanoes at the bottom of the ocean can release the gas after it is produced by reactions of rocks with seawater.

Almost 20 percent cancer patients wait to enroll in Hospice until their last three days of life. 

Their courage and determination is admirable, Hospice is palliative care, but it shortchanges both patients and their families and a new paper seeks to create a profile for people like to be late admissions.

The team examined de-identified data from electronic medical records of 64,264 patients in 12 hospices in the Coalition of Hospices Organized to Investigate Comparative Effectiveness network from January 2008 to May 2013. Hospices spanned 11 states, including Pennsylvania, with censuses ranging from 400 to 1,700 patients per day. Of those 64,264 patients, 10,460 had a hospice stay of 3 days or fewer.

There hasn't been a lot of progress made on greenhouse gas emissions policies - while America and the EU have made efforts to curb emissions, three countries that account for 3X the emissions of the US are exempt from treaties under an umbrella of developing nation status.

And neither policy makers nor the public trusts climate science the way they do other fields.

What the world needs is globally consistent, independent emissions assessments - and a lot less self-reporting, errors and lack of verification. 

Thiamine - vitamin B1 - can potentially cause a fatal brain disorder called Wernicke encephalopathy.

Wernicke encephalopathy typically occurs in people who have disorders such as alcoholism and anorexia that lead to malnourishment and is an example of the wide range of brain diseases called encephalopathies that are caused by metabolic disorders and toxic substances

Symptoms can include confusion, hallucinations, coma, loss of muscle coordination and vision problems such as double vision and involuntary eye movements. Untreated, the condition can lead to irreversible brain damage and death.

Acute encephalopathy has a rapid onset of between hours and days. It is commonly due to toxic and metabolic factors.

Though perception is that academia is harder on women when it comes to career and families, and they need to adopt a more corporate approach to penalize mothers less, it isn't just women; one third of men in academic science scale back their careers to focus on family life, according to surveys.