A group has created a new computer system that can quickly reconstruct protolanguages, the rudimentary ancient tongues from which modern languages evolved. And their tool is already 85 percent as accurate as the manual reconstructions performed by expert linguists, they write in PNAS.

Protolanguages are reconstructed by grouping words with common meanings from related modern languages, analyzing common features, and then applying sound-change rules and other criteria to derive the common parent.

The new tool designed by Bouchard-Côté and colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley analyzes sound changes at the level of basic phonetic units, and can operate at much greater scale than previous computerized tools.

Lead is a common element found in old paints, soil, water and the atmosphere. At high doses it is lethal but also causes minor symptoms like headaches.

Small children are obviously impacted more and lead has been linked to irreversible damage to organs, kidneys in particular, and the nervous system including the brain. Now lead exposure is implicated in 'learning disabilities', behavioral problems, lowered intelligence, stunted growth, and hearing impairment.

Apple's iPhone success is unquestioned but the perception exceeds the reality. Instead, the more modest expectations of Android devices make people far more satisfied with them.  iPhone 5 only ranks fifth in device satisfaction in a study of 93,825 US mobile users.

Europeans may not like immigrants from the east now, but that is where Stone Age Europe got its agriculture, and thus an origin of Western civilization, according to new data resulting from a study of the teeth of prehistoric farmers and the hunter-gatherers with whom they briefly overlapped.

Agriculture was introduced to Central Europe from the Near East by colonizers who brought farming technology with them.

President Barack Obama has been criticized for a lack of diversity in his cabinet compared to his predecessor - charges he also faced when he was president of the Harvard Law Review and only 25% of editors chosen by him were women. His Supreme Court Justices, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, were women but their selection meant that all 9 Supreme Court Justices have been chosen from a 230 mile section of the United States - two Ivy League Schools, Harvard and Yale, making decisions for all Americans. Critics again claimed a lack of diversity.

In the ongoing culture war among climate scientists, climate scientologists and climate deniers, few things stands out like the effect of volcanoes. 

Volcanoes are well-known for cooling the climate but how much has been unclear, leading to radically differing claims and interpretations. Atmospheric chemists from the Tokyo Institute of Technology and the University of Copenhagen say that patterns of isotopes found in ancient volcanic sulfur trapped in ice cores, and patterns due to stratospheric photochemistry, are a way to say for sure which historic episodes of global cooling were caused by volcanic eruptions. 

Researchers employing an extensive analysis of genomic information have identified micro RNA 506 (miR-506) as a potential therapeutic candidate for advanced or metastatic ovarian cancer
situations. This high-risk cohort of ovarian cancer patients can be tested in mouse models of the disease to try and find better treatments. 

NASA has got the hang of it now. Creating an almost unbearable suspense before the launching of a new satellite, that is. Actually, the last time NASA tortured us with excitement was in connection with a landing, and not a launching. I am of course referring to Curiosity's landing on Mars. That went well, to put it mildly. Both the 'show' and now the results that are ticking in from the mission. Currently it is drill baby, drill mode on Mars!

There is a good reason I was not a fan of Energy Secretary Steven Chu's nationalistic claim that we are in a 'race' to beat China in creating cheap solar panels.  

Quite some time ago I discussed here the tentative Y(4140) resonance  claimed by the CDF collaboration in their Run II data. This was a peak which was found in B-decay data containing a J/Psi signal, a phi meson, and an additional kaon track, and it resulted from the  study of the mass difference of the J/Psi + phi signal and the J/Psi alone.

Confused ? You have all rights to be. I will explain everything in good order, but be sure that the matter was puzzling not only for laymen but also for insiders: because the find was mysterious, not predicted by existing models, and potentially controversial.

B Decays and the CDF Claim