Athletes sometimes 'choke' - succumb to pressure and underperform - in key situations. How can an athlete be among the top 1,000 participants in the world at a task and be paralyzed by situations in a game they play with expertise?

Choking happens to lots of people.  We've all heard people say they can't take tests, for example.  A new analysis from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) suggests that when there are higher incentives to succeed, people can become so afraid of losing their potential reward that their performance suffers.

It's no surprise that tattoos and piercings have been linked to other risky decisions but capped Internet bandwidth?  

People who claim to see the 'aura' of others - and subsequently claim they can modify them - may actually have synesthesia, according to new research.

Synesthesia is believed to occur due to cross-wiring in the brain; synesthetes have more synaptic connections than 'normal' people and some are interconnected in ways others are not, including across brain regions. Since the brain regions responsible for the processing of each type of sensory stimuli are intensely interconnected, synesthetes see or taste a sound, feel a taste, or associate people with a particular color.

CONTENTS
PART A: Introduction: does the inertia of a body depend upon its energy content?
PART B: The Toolkit: mathematical and physical assumptions 
PART C: The Thought Experiment and the Word Problem
PART D: The Derivation. Solving the Word Problem
PART E: Conclusion: Einstein's Style or How to not be a Crack Pot

Today I read with pleasure a paper on Supersymmetry which is surprisingly well written and clear. I can only warmly advise anybody seriously interested in the phenomenology of SUSY (in particular, the version called "constrained minimal supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model", cMSSM for friends) to give it a close look.

The cMSSM is a very attractive "minimal" option to extend the Standard Model with a minimal addition of parameters (still, quite a few, as in any Supersymmetric theory). Its appeal lies in the fact that one may basically study the resulting predicted phenomenology by just investigating five crucial parameters.

PITTSBURGH and LYON, France, May 11, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Mylan Inc. today announced that it has launched Atorvastatin Calcium Tablets, 10 mg, 20 mg, 40 mg and 80 mg in France, Belgium, the UK, the Netherlands and Ireland. Mylan has received marketing authorization from each country's respective health authority to begin selling its product immediately. Atorvastatin Calcium is the generic version of Pfizer's Lipitor® Tablets. This product is indicated for the prevention of cardiovascular disease and hypercholesterolemia.

Shortly after celebrating the tenth anniversary of its time in service, engineers have declared the Envisat satellite lost, following numerous attempts to re-establish contact since April 8th.

Which countries are the best at providing higher education?

 The Universitas 21 Ranking was announced today at Lund University in Sweden. Universitas 21, a network of research universities, has developed their own ranking as a benchmark for governments, education institutions and individuals to highlight the importance of creating a strong environment for higher education institutions that will contribute to economic and cultural development, provide a high-quality experience for students and help institutions compete for overseas applicants. 

So calibrate accordingly when the metrics for 'higher education' don't actually mention education.

The family of Upsilon resonances is among the few things that can always cheer me up and remind me about my fascination for elementary particles when I get bored about my job. The sight of their mass peaks implies that heavy quarks bind together exactly as electrons and positrons do, orbiting around one another for a brief instant of time. An impossibly brief one, and yet quite long for subnuclear standards. It is always a refreshing and inspiring sight (below, see the three lowest-lying Upsilon states as they are seen by the CDF experiment at the Fermilab Tevatron collider, in a sizable fraction of their Run II data: lovely, aren't they ?).

The word 'Shirk' normally carries quite pronounced negative connotations. But are there circumstances when shirking might have beneficial effects? For example in the efficient operation of teams?

Shirk : verb ‘To avoid work, duties or responsibilities, especially if they are difficult or unpleasant.’ [source: Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary ]

According to new research from Tadashi Sekiguchi associate professor of Game Theory at Osaka Prefecture University, and colleagues from Wakayama University and Kyoto University in Japan the answer is yes.