Researchers have developed systematic search methods to discover one of the world's biggest helium gas fields, associated with volcanoes in the Tanzanian Rift Valley. This is the first time that helium has been found intentionally -previous finds were by accident- and opens the way for further large finds. This work is reported at the Goldschmidt conference in Yokohama, Japan.

As my blogging here has been erratic in the last couple of weeks, I feel I need to explain to my 23 readers (what citation is this BTW?) what I have been up to. So this post does not contain any physics, and is rather about how a physicist fights for some space and time for himself and his family, decoupled from his daily occupations, and hopefully lowers his stress level. 
I left my home in Venice on June 15th at four in the morning with my fiancee and my two kids (Filippo, 17 and Ilaria, 13 years old), headed  to Elafonisos, a tiny island in southern Greece. Our Volotea flight was due to leave the Marco Polo airport at 6.30AM -an early and cheap flight I had picked to ensure we would get to destination at a reasonable time. 

Eating a powdered food supplement based on a molecule produced by bacteria in the gut, reduces cravings for high-calorie foods such as chocolate, cake and pizza, according to a small pilot study which asked 20 volunteers to consume a milkshake that either contained an ingredient called inulin-propionate ester, or a type of fiber called inulin.

Previous studies have found that bacteria in the gut release a compound called propionate when they digest the fiber inulin, which can signal to the brain to reduce appetite. However the inulin-propionate ester supplement releases much more propionate in the intestines than inulin alone.

MIAMI--As Louisiana's wetlands continue to disappear at an alarming rate, a new study has pinpointed the man-made structures that disrupt the natural water flow and threaten these important ecosystems. The findings have important implications for New Orleans and other coastal cities that rely on coastal wetlands to serve as buffer from destructive extreme weather events.

Scientists at the University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science found that man-made canals limit the natural tidal inundation process in roughly 45 percent of the state's coastline, and disruptions from levees accounted for 15 percent.

BINGHAMTON, NY - Government agencies are having difficulty tracking potential terrorist attacks, since terrorists have developed new ways to communicate besides social media. A new framework developed by researchers at Binghamton University, State University of New York is able to predict future terrorist attacks by recognizing patterns in past attacks.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Researchers at MIT and elsewhere have found a new way of using mid-infrared lasers to turn regions of molecules in the open air into glowing filaments of electrically charged gas, or plasma. The new method could make it possible to carry out remote environmental monitoring to detect a wide range of chemicals with high sensitivity.

The new system makes use of a mid-infrared ultra-fast pulsed laser system to generate the filaments, whose colors can reveal the chemical fingerprints of different molecules. The finding is being reported this week in the journal Optica, in a paper by principal investigator Kyung-Han Hong of MIT's Research Laboratory of Electronics, and seven other researchers at MIT; in Binghamton, New York; and in Hamburg, Germany.

When guessing the weight of an ox or estimating how many marbles fill a jar, the many have been shown to be smarter than the few. These collective displays of intelligence have been dubbed "the wisdom of crowds," but exactly how many people make a crowd wise?

New research by Santa Fe Institute Professor Mirta Galesic and her colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin suggests that larger crowds do not always produce wiser decisions. In fact, when it comes to qualitative decisions such as "which candidate will win the election" or "which diagnosis fits the patient's symptoms," moderately-sized "crowds," around five to seven randomly selected members, are likely to outperform larger ones.

URBANA, Ill. - Binge eating is the most prevalent type of eating disorder across races, ethnic groups, ages, and genders. Surprisingly, binge eating has even been reported in children as young as 5 years old.

In order to put childhood binge eating into context, a new systematic review from the University of Illinois identifies two potential risk factors for binge eating in children under the age of 12. With family being the most proximal and influential setting affecting behaviors and attitudes in children, the study reports that parental non-involvement or emotional unresponsiveness and weight-related teasing in the family are behaviors consistently associated with childhood binge eating.

Anyone who's gone camping has seen birds foraging for picnic crumbs, and according to new research in The Condor: Ornithological Applications, the availability of food in campgrounds significantly alters jays' behavior and may even change how they interact with other bird species.

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, ILL (June 29, 2016) - If you have a child with newly-diagnosed eczema, you may be wondering how often you should bathe him. You are not alone. For more than 100 years, doctors have been asked about the risks and benefits of frequent bathing for those with atopic dermatitis (eczema). And parents haven't gotten consistent responses.

A new article in Annals of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, the scientific publication of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (ACAAI) looks at the research and answers the question. According to the authors, daily bathing is fine, as long as it's followed by lots of moisturizer. In other words, "soak and smear."