The Fermi collaboration released yesterday a paper describing their measurement of the electron and positron flux of cosmic rays. Simultaneously, a second paper was published by the HESS collaboration on the very same topic. Together, these two important new articles provide the means for a significant advancement in our understanding of the spectrum of electrons and positrons from nearby sources.

It is especially meaningful to consider the two results together because the two instruments are as different as salt grains and tequila. Let me see where to start:

Engineering A Biological Pulse Generator

I've got my issues with synthetic biology. Either synthetic biologists do something trivial dressed up in elaborate engineering language, or they achieve something impressive and complex the old fashioned way (the way molecular biologists have been doing it for decades) - genetic engineering through trial and error, with very little principles-based engineering involved.

What I want to see is a result that falls somewhere in between these two extremes: genetic engineering that's non-trivial, but not so complex that it's impossible to use simulation and the rudimentary quantitative design principles that are useful in biology.

While I was napping, Jupiter became a 2nd sun. Although it was observed in January by STEREO, we forgot to tell people. Or perhaps we were hiding the truth. Also, it was so well covered on YouTube that we didn't think we had to bother with a press release.

And thus occurred the most benign conspiracy in the history of NASA.

See, usually NASA is accused of hiding evidence of aliens, moon landing hoaxes, flat Earths, and other things Too Dangerous For People To Know. But when Jupiter was seen igniting as a second sun, the response was... upbeat.

Jan Hendrik Schön, if you have heard the name, will either fascinate or enrage you.   His ability to progress from ridiculous fibs to world-class deception as a 31-year-old physicist working at Bell Labs in New Jersey is certainly impressive.

How did fellow scientists let him get away with possibly the worst case of physics research fraud known?  It deserves a whole book, and Eugenie Samuel Reich is here to help.   If you can't sit through a whole book like Plastic Fantastic (out next week), her short version is in Physics World.

Toddlers with autism appear more likely to have an enlarged amygdala, a brain area associated with numerous functions, including the processing of faces and emotion, according to a report in the May issue of Archives of General Psychiatry. In addition, this brain abnormality appears to be associated with the ability to share attention with others, a fundamental ability thought to predict later social and language function in children with autism.

It's certainly the case that 'dark matter', like 'Smurf' or 'government regulation', has in recent times become a de facto explanation for the unexplained.   We aren't big believers in magic so mysterious, undetected forces that explain everything probably actually explain nothing - and tossing out Newton in the process  brings on a higher order of scrutiny, since he has been declared irrelevant often before only to survive quite nicely.

Dark matter is currently unable to reconcile all the current discrepancies between measurements and predictions based on theoretical models and competing theories of gravitation have therefore been developed - their problem is that they conflict with Newton's theory of gravitation.

If you want to learn a little something about 'characteristic curvature', you're in the right place.   Hydrophilic surfactants love water, but lipophilic surfactants love oils and dislike water.

Okay, if you were expecting an article about Jessica Alba, you can stop reading.

But if chemistry is your thing, a new research protocol developed by Dr. Acosta and colleagues from the University of Toronto's Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry builds on more than 30 years of phase behavior studies of microemulsions, the clear, stable liquid mixtures of oil, water and surfactant, and the concept of hydrophilic-lipophilic difference.

With hot, new technologies, biologists are taking higher-resolution snapshots of what's going on inside the cell, but the results are stirring up controversy. One of the most interesting recent discoveries is that transcription is everywhere: DNA is transcribed into RNA all over the genome, even DNA that has long been thought to have a non-functional role. What is all of this transcription for? Does the 'dark matter' of the genome have some cryptic, undiscovered function?

BOSTON ––– In a new study of terminally ill cancer patients, researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute found that those who draw on religion to cope with their illness are more likely to receive intensive, life-prolonging medical care as death approaches –– treatment that often entails a lower quality of life in patients' final days.

Previous research has shown that more religious patients often prefer aggressive end-of-life (EOL) treatment. The new study –– to be published in the March 18 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association –– examined whether these patients actually receive such care. The study's findings suggest that physicians tend to comply with religious patients' wishes for more aggressive care.

Preliminary research in healthy men suggests that the narcolepsy drug modafinil, increasingly being used to enhance cognitive abilities, affects the activity of dopamine in the brain in a way that may create the potential for abuse and dependence, according to a study in the March 18 issue of JAMA.