With the Higgs boson in the bag, the game called "global fit" that particle physicists have been playing for a couple of decades has changed significantly. The knowledge of the Higgs boson mass provided by the measurements obtained by the ATLAS and CMS experiments, added to dozens of  other measurements of critical observable properties of subatomic particles that have been measured at LEP/SLC, LEPII, the Tevatron, and the LHC itself, allow us to constrain some of the fundamental parameters of the Standard Model more than direct experimental determinations do.

But what the heck is a global fit ?

The World Is Getting Cooler*

*  Not!

This is something of a pre-emptive strike against the quote miners of this world.  I predict that they will use a new study of cloud seeding to sell ice damage insurance or something.

If you sprinkle a cup of water on a bonfire it will have a tiny cooling effect.  It will not put out the fire or wishomagically reverse the heating effect.  Scientists know exactly what they mean by a cooling effect, and so does everyone who ever used a cooling fan in summer.  But there are some snake oil salesmen who want to convince you that a simple cooling fan can lower the air temperature.

Bullying and violence are the latest cultural magnet for administrators in schools around the country, but the solution may not be paid commercials, more books or talks in the gym - it may be as simple as embracing team sports again.

At the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in Washington, D.C., researchers discussed their analysis of data from the 2011 North Carolina Youth Risk Behavior Survey to see if athletic participation was associated with violence-related behaviors, including fighting, carrying a weapon and being bullied. A representative sample of 1,820 high school students in the state completed the survey, which also asked adolescents whether they played any school-sponsored team sports (e.g., football) or individual sports (e.g. track).

Natural emissions and man-made pollutants have an unexpected effect; they make clouds brighter and have a cooling effect on the world's climate.

A quick primer: Clouds are made of water droplets, condensed on to tiny particles suspended in the air. When the air is humid enough, the particles swell into cloud droplets. It has been known for some decades that the number of these particles and their size control how bright the clouds appear from the top, controlling the efficiency with which clouds scatter sunlight back into space. A major challenge for climate science has been trying to understand and quantify these effects, which have a major impact in polluted regions.

Researchers were able to controll seizures in epileptic mice with a one-time transplantation of medial ganglionic eminence (MGE) cells into the hippocampus, which inhibit signaling in overactive nerve circuits.

Cell therapy has become a focus of epilepsy research, in part because current medications, even when effective, only control symptoms and not underlying causes of the disease, according to Scott C. Baraban, PhD of UC San Francisco, who led the new study. In many types of epilepsy, he said, current drugs have no therapeutic value at all.

Neil Armstrong's Heartbeat - EKG Up For Auction

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This article has been updated - please see:
One Small Step - Two Small Strips ( Or Maybe Three )




RR Auction of Amherst New Hampshire has announced a 2013 Space and Aviation Autograph and Artifact Auction.  Items on sale will appeal to aviation and space buffs.  RR Auction states that "Offerings include over 850 museum quality artifacts from the Golden Age of aviation and space flight".

Mammals have the ability to adapt to a range of the temperature. While physiological homeostasis has a lot to do with this, part of the reason why mammals can adapt to cold temperatures is the presence of energy-burning brown fat cells. Unlike the large fat storage units in white fat cells (the cell type responsible for obesity), brown fat cells have the capacity to generate heat and provide insulation from cold. Recently, scientists discovered a population of fat cells with the properties of brown and white fat cells, a population dubbed the beige (brite cells) that emerges in mammalian fat as a result of cold adaptation.

Since marijuana is fast becoming legal again in America, it seems strange to be calling cigarettes a 'gateway' to it, but anti-smoking campaigns are almost as large a business as tobacco and so a paper at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in Washington, D.C., today supports the notion that cigarettes are a gateway to marijuana. 

And, like everyone who picks a position and then wants data to support it, they used surveys of students. They found that students who smoked marijuana smoked more cigarettes than those who just smoked cigarettes. Cigarettes are so demonized a successful public relations campaign against drugs might be that it leads to more smoking. That will likely work far better than a fried egg in a television commercial.

The Whale, The Torpedo And Cruelty To Animals,

a brief history of the use of electricity in medicine and the development of the pacemaker.

Part 2: The Age Of The Electricians

Part 1, was about early uses of electricity in medicine.  The 'torpedo' of the title was once recommended as a cure for headaches.

Is a David and Goliath battle brewing in commercial squid fishery, with larger purse seiners robbing "scoop" fishermen of their livelihoods, sometimes illegally?

That is what Virginia Hennessey wrote in the Monterey Herald. Hearing claims of three squid brail (smaller boat) fishermen, one might think that the larger seine vessel squid fishermen are illegally catching all of the allowable quota.

But that’s just not the case. In fact, not only is there an abundance of squid in California’s waters – more than enough to go around – most of the brail-boat fishing fleet have no problem with the current management structure.