Biofuels production has never lived up to the hype. It does something, so it is less hype than quantum computers have been for 15 years, but biofuels suffer from inefficiencies that have kept it from improving due to time and experience, some of which is that subsidies and mandates lead to less innovation rather than more, and then there is a chemistry problem.

There may be hope for the chemistry problem. A new paper
the Journal of the American Chemical Society finds that water in the conversion process helps form an impurity which slows down key chemical reactions.

Silent strokes are a loss of blood flow to parts of the brain. Such strokes do not cause immediate symptoms and typically go undiagnosed, but they cause damage. In kids, they can even lower IQ.

One form of drug counseling to help young people with drinking problems makes people in a 'we must do something' culture feel better may be of limited benefit, a new systematic review suggests. 

Each year, around 320,000 people worldwide between the ages of 15 and 29 die as a result of alcohol misuse. Most of those deaths are due to car accidents, murders, suicides or drowning. Motivational interviewing is a counseling technique developed in the 1980s that is sometimes offered to people with alcohol problems. It aims to help them overcome ambivalence and change behavior. Counselors listen, adopt a non-judgmental, non-confrontational stance and then highlight the negative consequences of drinking. 

Carbon tetrachloride (CCl4) was once used in dry cleaning and as a fire-extinguishing agent but once it was found to be a cause of ozone depleted, it was regulated in 1987 under the Montreal Protocol along with other chlorofluorocarbons. Parties to the Montreal Protocol have reported zero new CCl4 emissions since, though worldwide emissions of CCl4 still average 39 kilotons per year, about 30 percent of emissions prior to the treaty going into effect.

A brain imaging study that looked at chronic users of codeine-containing cough syrups found deficits in specific regions of brain white matter and associates these changes with increased impulsivity in
codeine-containing cough syrup
users. 

For most people, the Jurassic period conjures up images of huge dinosaurs chomping their way through lush vegetation and each other. 

But mammals and their immediate ancestors were also around 201 to 145 million years ago, just not as spectacular as we are now. 

Early Jurassic mammals were thought to have been confined to the ecological margins, eating whatever insects they could find. However, this was also the time when new mammal characteristics – such as better hearing and teeth capable of precise chewing – were developing. So, if the earliest mammals were all small generalized insectivores, where was the competition driving the evolution of such features?