As I briefly laid out in The Science Of Baseball: Coefficients And Happy Haitians, people like home runs though baseball purists don't necessarily think much of them - unless their team gets one.
 

ORLANDO, Florida, March 29 /PRNewswire/ --

- In SPIRIT II Trial, XIENCE V Drug Eluting Stent Demonstrates Clinically Meaningful Reductions Compared to TAXUS in Key Safety Endpoints, Including an 88 Percent Reduction in the Risk of Cardiac Death at Three Years

Video games that involve high levels of action,like first-person-shooter games, can increase real-world vision, according to research in Nature Neuroscience, including discerning slight differences in shades of gray; an attribute of the human visual system that can't be improved, it has been believed.

Daphne Bavelier, professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester, says that very practiced action gamers can actually become 58 percent better at perceiving fine differences in contrast.

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) tend to stare at people's mouths rather than their eyes. A new study of 2-year-olds with the social deficit disorder suggests why they might find mouths so attractive: lip-sync—the exact match of lip motion and speech sound. Such audiovisual synchrony preoccupied toddlers who have autism, while their unaffected peers focused on socially meaningful movements of the human body, such as gestures and facial expressions. 

Chemists at the University of Illinois have created a simple and inexpensive molecular technique that replaces an expensive atomic force microscope for studying what happens to small molecules when they are stretched or compressed. 

The researchers use stiff stilbene, a small, inert structure, as a molecular force probe to generate well-defined forces on various molecules, atom by atom. 

"By pulling on different pairs of atoms, we can explore what happens when we stretch a molecule in different ways," said chemistry professor Roman Boulatov. "That information tells us a lot about the properties of fleeting structures called transition states that govern how, and how fast, chemical transformations occur." 

The benefits to animals of omega 3 fatty acids in fish oils have been well documented – helping the heart and circulatory system.   Can they also help in improving meat quality and reducing methane emissions?

Perhaps.   Methane given off by farm animals is a major contributor to greenhouse gas levels and researchers from University College Dublin have reported that by including 2% fish oil in the diet of cattle they achieved a reduction in the amount of methane released by the animals.

ORLANDO, Florida, March 28 /PRNewswire/ --

- EVEREST High-Risk Registry Data Shows Improved Symptomatic Status and Cardiac Function in Functional MR Patients Treated with the MitraClip(R) System

Percutaneous mitral valve repair using the MitraClip(R) system in symptomatic high-risk surgical patients with functional mitral regurgitation (FMR) improves patient clinical status, and left ventricular function, according to 12-month data from the high-risk registry arm of the EVEREST II (Endovascular Valve Edge-to-Edge REpair STudy) study presented today at the 58th Annual Scientific Session of the American College of Cardiology (ACC) i2 Summit Scientific Sessions.

Important business has taken me out of sunny California and across the country to the slightly warmer March days of Florida; baseball spring training.

I maintain an affection for spring training even though I no longer live in a winter climate where a few days of sunshine after 5 months of cold can truly be appreciated.    But I spent my childhood in Florida, in a baseball haven aptly called Dodgertown, so cold climate or not baseball in spring is a necessary ritual.   It gives me a reminder I haven't seen my family in a year and spring baseball is somehow both better and worse than regular season baseball, when it becomes more of a business and obviously played by the best of the best.

DURBAN, South Africa, March 28 /PRNewswire/ --

- After Seven Years of Growth, Ithembalabantu 'People's Hope' AIDS Clinic Moves to New, Larger Freestanding Site at Umlazi's Ithala Centre. Formal Dedication and Ribbon-cutting Ceremony Set for Tuesday, March 31st

- AHF to Provide Free Mass HIV Testing during Daylong Celebration and Launch with Goal of 500 Tests

A while back there was a news story that the Pantheon may have been constructed to create a special effect in the sunlight at the equinoxes. I'm slow in reacting because I've read the book where the claim appears, and I've been taking time to try and track down one or two other ideas regarding the Pantheon. The story is based on a chapter from a new book Time in Antiquity by Robert Hannah, and it's a great example of how thinking about ancient astronomy has gently expanded over the past decade.