Lithium has been used for more than 50 years in the treatment manic depression, clinically termed bipolar disorder,  though no one is sure why it has been beneficial.

Don't be concerned.  We don't know why aspirin works either, but we still use it.

Still, science mysteries are going to be pursued and new research from Cardiff University suggests a possible mechanism for why Lithium works, opening the door for better understanding of the illness and potentially more effective treatments.

If we can't get rid of CO2, the greenhouse gas that gets the most press, perhaps we can store it, say researchers.    Maybe even in rock form.     Carbon dioxide when mixed with water forms carbonic acid (also known as carbonated water or soda water), which can percolate through  rocks, dissolving some minerals and forming solid carbonates with them, thereby storing the carbon dioxide in rock form.

Sigurdur Gislason of the University of Iceland has been studying the possibility of sequestration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in basalt and presented his findings today to several thousand geochemists from around the world at the Goldschmidt Conference hosted by the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Some estimates claim that within the first week after giving birth, up to 70 percent of women experience symptoms of the 'baby blues' - obviously a different thing than clinical postpartum depression, which perhaps 13 percent of new mothers show symptoms of having and is defined as a major depressive episode starting within 4 weeks after delivery.

Milder postpartum blues are obviously a major risk factor for developing postpartum depression and severe postpartum blues symptoms can be viewed as a prodromal stage for postpartum depression, say researchers, and in a new paper they reveal an increase of the enzyme MAO-A throughout the female brain in the immediate postpartum period and propose a neurobiological model for postpartum blues.

Hydrogen is the fuel-cell future but currently it has a number of issues, primarily related to storage(1) and cost.   Cost because getting hydrogen out of a molecule requires a catalyst and efficient catalysts, like platinum, dissolve during the stop-and-go driving of a fuel-cell-powered electric car - as much as 45 percent of the catalyst can be lost during five days. 

You know when gold looks cheap by comparison your energy technology is not ready for the mass market.

Light beams travel in straight lines and don't go around corners, they instead spread through a process known as diffraction.

Researchers at Tel Aviv University have discovered that small beams of light can indeed be bent in a laboratory setting, diffracting much less than a "regular" beam.    These rays are called "Airy beams" after English astronomer Sir George Biddell Airy, who studied the parabolic trajectories of light in rainbows. 

There are two aspects to food research; an industry one, where food additives that can make food taste more or less sweet without calories have benefits, and a therapeutic one, like treating patients who over eat.