A previously unknown chemical compound in the atmosphere may help explain how and when clouds are formed, say a team of researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and the University of Copenhagen.

The discovery of so-called dihydroxyepoxides (an aerosol precursor) was originally found when a team of researchers from Caltech mounted a measuring device known as a Chemical Ionization Mass Spectrometer (CIMS) on an airplane and flew it over the forests of North America.

Professor Henrik Kjærgaard from the Department of Chemistry at the University of Copenhagen calls the new compounds a 'missing link' in the formation of clouds.

Researchers at the Department of Psychiatry, Klinikum rechts der Isar, Technische Universität München, say they have shown that formal education diminishes the impact of Alzheimer’s disease on cognition even if a manifest brain volume loss has already occurred.

Dr. Robert Perneczky, Department of Psychiatry at Klinikum rechts der Isar explains, “We know that there is not always a close association between brain damage due to Alzheimer’s disease and the resulting symptoms of dementia. In fact, there are individuals with severe brain pathology with almost no signs of dementia, whereas others with only minor brain lesions exhibit a considerable degree of clinical symptoms.”

If you feel lethargic or that your memory is slipping, diet may be a factor.   A new research study says that in less than 10 days of eating a high-fat diet, rats had decreased ability to exercise and experienced significant short-term memory loss. The researchers say the results show an important link between what we eat, how we think, and how our bodies perform. 

A group of researchers from Indiana University's Center for Health Policy and Professionalism Research (CHPPR) say they have found that support for government health insurance for individuals under age 65 remains virtually the same regardless of how the plan is described or how involved the government would be.   So support is not a 'framing' issue, public relations or political roadblocks, it seems to be a fundamental disagreement about what the government can and cannot effectively do - and that falls along political party lines.

One of the more exciting aspects of going 4-wheeling in the wilderness is the potential for getting stuck in the mud or hung up on a rock. It’s not so exciting if the 4-wheeler is a robot on Mars (actually, a 6-wheeler). There are websites that tell you how to free your vehicle on Earth (such as http://4wheeldrive.about.com/cs/offroadingtips/a/aa020401a_5.htm). For the Mars rover Spirit, her drivers have to test out options in a simulated Martian landscape.

The science is in and men are easy.

Men are far more interested in casual sex than women, according to Dr. Achim Schützwohl, from the Department of Psychology at Brunel University in the UK, and a team who published their results in Human Nature.  Their research showed that men are more likely than women to report having had casual sex and they express a greater desire for it than do women.

But men need to be exceptionally attractive to tempt women to consider casual sex, they say.

What do you do if you're stuck between a banana and a hard place?

The slippery slope of paying extortionists tripped up Chiquita in the late 1990s and early 2000s, much like Donald below...


But two years after the company agreed to pay a $25 million fine for paying violent paramilitaries in Colombia to protect its employees there, Chiquita is still dealing with the fallout. If you were the CEO of Chiquita, what would you have done?

A Boatload of Baddies

Tonight you have a chance to contribute to science -namely, the knowledge of our solar system- and have a lot of fun at the same time. Do you want to know how ? Then please read on.

Comet Swift-Tuttle (left, courtesy NASA) may be far away by now, but the debris that gets thrown out in space during each of its passages in the proximity of our Sun traces the full elliptical orbit of the comet, like droplets of sweat of an athlete running the 10,000 meters in a stadium. And tonight, the Earth is going to plunge in the core of the filament of debris following the comet's orbit.

Folsom, CA – August 11, 2009 – On Monday, August 17th at 1:30PM in Hensill Hall 113, attendees of the 90th Annual Pacific Division Meeting of the AAAS in San Francisco will get to learn about the latest efforts in science communication from some of the brightest minds in the field.

The symposium is called “Good Science is Only Part of the Job: Communicating Science to the Public.” (Online link: http://www.sou.edu/aaaspd/2009SANFRANCISCO/Symposia09.html#15).

I finally got around to reading Carl Sagan’s The Variety of Scientific Experience, a volume edited by his wife, Ann Druyan, and based on a series of Gifford Lectures on Natural Theology that Carl delivered in 1985 at the University of Glasgow.