Propylene, a chemical used to make food-storage containers, car bumpers and other consumer products, has been detected on Saturn's moon Titan, the first definitive detection of the plastic ingredient on any moon or planet besides ours.

The propylene was identified in Titan's lower atmosphere by Cassini's Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS), which measures the infrared light emitted from Saturn and its moons in much the same way our hands feel the warmth of a fire.

CIRS can identify a particular gas glowing in the lower layers of the atmosphere from its unique thermal fingerprint. The challenge is to isolate this one signature from the signals of all other gases around it.

In the beginning, Mother Nature created the universe and in it she put Quantum Mechanics.

Mother Nature had formed out of the ground all the wild particles in the sky. She brought them to Quantum Mechanics to see what Quantum Mechanics would name them; and whatever Quantum Mechanics called each thing, that was its name.  But it was not enough.

Then Mother Nature said, “It is not good for quantum mechanics to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for her.” And so she created Relativity and a classical garden in which they could live.

Most research has focused on the amount of global warming resulting from increased greenhouse gas concentrations but there has been relatively little study of the pace of the change following these increases.

A new paper concludes that about half of the warming occurs within the first 10 years after an instantaneous step increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration, but about one-quarter of the warming occurs more than a century after the step increase. The authors used results from the majority of the world's leading climate models - over 50 climate simulations, which were performed using 20 different climate models for the Climate Model Intercomparison Project, Phase 5 (CMIP5).  

More than half the people in Ontario who reported they had major depression did not use physician-based mental health services in the following year, according to a new paper based on OHIP data from the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences.

Estimates claim that up to one in four people suffer at some point in their lives from depression, which reduces quality of life and is associated with increased disability and lower productivity at work. Women are diagnosed with depression more than twice as often as men. The analysis set out to see whether gender plays a role in seeking mental health care. In general, women use mental health services about 10 per cent more than men, reflecting the fact they use health care services overall more than men.

While heart disease still edges out cancer among all Americans, cancer is the number one killer among Hispanics in Texas. Yet their prognosis remains superior to Caucasians, a Hispanic paradox that debunks the notion that income and education are key factors in health care.

Heart disease is rather common in the general population but the risk is up to four times greater for diabetics, according to the National Institutes of Health. The American Heart Association estimates that at least 65 percent of people with diabetes die from heart disease or stroke. 

Researchers have identified a biological pathway that is activated when blood sugar levels are abnormally high and causes irregular heartbeats. This cardiac arrhythmia is linked with heart failure and sudden cardiac death.  

In 1963, Roy Kerr's hypothesis was of a "clean" black hole model and that remains the dominant paradigm. From theory to reality things may be quite different, black holes may be much "dirtier" than what Kerr believed, the authors write.

A tiny Micro-Electro-Mechanical System (MEMS) accelerometer used in smart phones to adjust the orientation of the screen could serve to create a real-time urban seismic network and increase the amount of strong motion data collected during a large earthquake, according to a new paper in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America.

Since the 1990s, (MEMS accelerometers have been measure the rate of acceleration of ground motion and vibration of cars, buildings and installations. They revolutionized the automotive airbag industry and are found in many devices used daily, including smart phones, video games and laptops.

The Affordable Care Act is not quite ready, some of the key aspects won't be available and many large corporations are still exempt, but it is rolling out for individuals tomorrow. 76% of U.S. adults are aware of the law's individual mandate - they know the law will require them to have insurance or pay penalties - but only 40% are aware that new health insurance marketplaces are (in many cases) opening on October 1, or that financial assistance that is available to help people with low or moderate incomes pay their health insurance premiums.

A few days ago I posted the results of a poll ran on 50 or so participants to a workshop on the Higgs boson in Madrid. The poll consisted of six questions on the expectations one had on the possibility of new discoveries by present-day accelerators, as well as on the nature of the underlying theory of fundamental interactions, and on the nature of dark matter.