On Jupiter, cloudless patches are so rare that the larger visible ones get the special name 'hot spots.'

How do these clearings form and why they are they only found near the planet's equator?

It's a mystery, by Jove, but using images from the Cassini spacecraft, scientists have found new evidence that hot spots in Jupiter's atmosphere are created by a Rossby wave, a pattern also seen in Earth's atmosphere and oceans. The team found the wave responsible for the hot spots glides up and down through layers of the atmosphere like a carousel horse on a merry-go-round.

Being Pope may mean good things in the afterlife but here on Earth, it doesn't count for a lot on the Internet. On the day Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected Pope Francis, over 600 domain names were registered by cybersquatters. They must be evangelicals.

Even mistaken names like Francis I were taken.

So Popefrancis.org is not available to the Roman Pontiff, along with most of the country-specific domains, like popefrancis.fr. Even popefrancisi.com was scooped by someone.

Oddly, at the time of this writing, his Argentina country-specific domain was still available - so if you want to grab Popefrancis.ar.com, you still can. Look for domain company GoDaddy to have scantily-clad nuns stripping in the enclave advertising that one real soon.

The presentations of the last few days at the Neutrino Telescopes conference in Venice allowed me to get to full speed with the developments, new ideas, and new experiments taking data or just in design phase in this fascinating, relatively young field of investigation at the crossroads of particle physics and astrophysics.

The talk slides are online in the conference site, but as usual by just flipping them one usually does not manage to get the most important points. So I am providing summaries of every talk, at the conference blog site.

Yesterday I posted several articles there. Here is a list with links:

- Status of Gerda

How does the human brain 'decodes' letters on a page to read a word?

Psychologists are trying to help neuroscientists unravel the subtle thinking mechanisms involved in reading, which could provide solutions for helping people who find it difficult to read, like dyslexics.

In order to read successfully, readers need not only to identify the letters in words, but also to accurately code the positions of those letters, so that they can distinguish words like CAT and ACT. At the same time, however, it's clear that raeders can dael wtih wodrs in wihch not all teh leettrs aer in thier corerct psotiions.

A team of international scientist has made the most detailed examination yet of the atmosphere of a Jupiter-size like planet beyond our solar system. 

Poverty and under-education dampen contraception use in Nepal but another factor may be more intractable: Deeply held cultural preferences for sons over daughters.

The cross-sectional study was based on data from the 2011 Nepal Demographic and Health Survey, which found that only one in five married adolescent and young women used modern contraception. Rates were lowest among women who resided in rural areas, lacked education or social status, were married as minors or had no sons.

Coffee may help lower your risk of having a stroke, especially if it is a regular part of your diet, according to research published in Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association.

Green tea also, though it's unclear how green tea affects stroke risks. A compound group known as catechins may provide some protection. Catechins have an antioxidant anti-inflammatory effect, increasing plasma antioxidant capacity and anti-thrombogenic effects.  Some chemicals in coffee include chlorogenic acid, thus cutting stroke risks by lowering the chances of developing type 2 diabetes.

Terahertz (THz) radiation, in the electromagnetic spectrum between microwaves and infrared light, is rapidly finding important uses in medical diagnostics, security, and scientific research. 

But researchers are pursuing answers regarding potential human health risks. 

CITES today overruled objections from countries like Japan, China and India and listed five species of highly traded sharks under the CITES Appendices, along with both manta rays and one species of sawfish. 

Japan, India and Gambia challenged the Committee's desire to list the oceanic whitetip shark, while Grenada and China objected to listing three hammerhead species. 

Proponents of the various listing proposals include the USA, the EU, Australia, Brazil, Colombia, Comoros, Costa Rica, Croatia, Ecuador, Egypt, Honduras and Mexico. The shark and ray proposals received more than the two-thirds majority of votes necessary for adoption while the sawfish listing succeeded by consensus. 

Do people form into tribe-like communities on social network sites such as Twitter?