Marketing experts have long wanted a reliable method of forecasting responses to products and messages.

A study that analyzed the brain responses of 16 individuals says even a few people can be a remarkably strong predictor of the preferences of large TV audiences, up to 90 percent in the case of Super Bowl commercials.

This is far superior to the wobbly claims made by psychology surveys. 

In Lewis Caroll's novel "Alice in Wonderland", the Cheshire Cat could disappear but its grin remained.  Why? Who knows? Like dogs named Checkers and Esther Williams swimming pools, things don't always make sense. Scientifically, that cat was an object separated from its properties - it was a quantum cat.

Achalasia is a rare disease, affecting 1 in 100,000 people, characterized by a loss of nerve cells in the esophageal wall and manifested as chest pain during eating, weight loss, and regurgitation of food.

When we swallow, a sphincter in the lower esophagus opens, allowing food to enter the stomach. Nerve cells in the esophageal wall control the opening and closing of this sphincter, but in people with achalasia, these nerve cells gradually disappear. Without these cells, the esophageal sphincter fails to relax, causing food to accumulate in the esophagus. This results in the swallowing problems, regurgitation, vomiting, nighttime coughing, chest pain and weight loss. 

Two new papers postulate that there will be a water crisis by 2040. Not because of population, but because of current energy and power solutions.  And they believe solar and wind power is the only answer.

 In most countries, electricity is the biggest source of water consumption because the power plants need cooling cycles in order to function and that is why the scholars from Aarhus University in Denmark, Vermont Law School and CNA Corporation, a federally-funded research center for the United States Navy and Marine Corps, advocate solar and wind energy over existing technology.

Credit: Aarhus University

Teach For America is a group that recruits recent college graduates to teach in poorer public schools for two years, the idea being that they would be better than substitute teachers in those districts. Education unions dislike the organization and call them 'scabs' - because they are non-union labor.

Now, Teach for America is setting its sights on capturing school board seats across the nation. They are never going to win over an education union that wants to protect tenure and jobs, but if they win the school board, their goal of reforming education may succeed

Beginning in 1969, a court decision, motivated by a lack of racial integration in schools, led to students being shipped to schools in other neighborhoods. As part of a political campaign against Richard Nixon, his political opposition latched onto this forced busing and school desegregation to show they cared about minorities more. The trade-off was that kids were no longer in their own neighborhoods and felt like pawns in a culture war.

Though many people believe that CO2 is the most abundant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, that honor actually goes to water vapor. NASA has been saying for years that water vapor is the biggest amplifier in global warming, perhaps double the effect of CO2,  and a new study from scientists at the University of Miami confirms rising levels of water vapor in the upper troposphere will intensify climate change impacts over the next decades.

In the NFL. there is a salary cap and while money in contracts can be guaranteed, the contract itself is not. For people outside the US this makes no sense but basically every contract has a bonus, which is guaranteed, and then an annual salary, which is not. A team can waive a player and the money of the bonus counts 'against the cap' while the annual salary is prorated.

The South Pole is the spot in Antarctica at 90 degrees S, where the surface of the earth intersects the axis of rotation. Except for inside the United States Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, there is no plant or animal life.

Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen arrived in 1911 but evidence of man had already beat him there - in the form of industrial air pollution that arrived long before any human.

Running was once a big health fad. Like red wine and chocolate on the miracle side, or wheat and sugar on the panic side, mainstream media is happy to build up fads so they can tear them down later.

Modern stories revolve around people dropping dead from running but you are a lot less likely to die running, even if for only a few minutes a day at slow speed, than you are sitting around eating Doritos.