After the Olympics, the next big thing is the international Large Hadron Collider. There's a lot of excitement at CERN. The first injections, and without a hitch, of low energy protons shot through an eighth of the 27 km LHC ring. Back to back for this weekend they're doing it again at 0.45 TeV with the anti-clockwise beam. It's an important preliminary test, kicking the protons from the pre-accelerator loops, into the unknown. At this point CERN is confident there is nothing to worry about. The energy is only half of the currently most powerful collider, Fermilab's Tevatron, in Batavia, Ill. So, CERN's probably right, this time. Higher energies will be the real test.

Now for the news major media aren't covering, from the current Strings 2008, a CERN conference, and not only on String theory. It's another window on CERN that is fascinating.

Scientific happenings, big and small, on this day in history

But first, today’s quiz:

What famous inventor, born on this day in 1871, will forever be famous for something he did for only 12 seconds? Think you know…? You might be right. To be sure check out the answer at the end of the article.

Fluoridation was adopted more by politicking than by science according to Edward Groth III, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, with Consumers Union, publishers of the popular Consumers Reports magazine. In a presentation made at the February 2001 Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Groth reported that, with three experimental fluoridation trials incomplete, enthusiastic fluoridation proponents successfully lobbied and persuaded the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) to endorse fluoridation in 1950 who, then with a few state dental officials, began vigorously promoting fluoridation with little, if any, scientific support.

Because face recognition is effortlessly achieved by people from all different cultures it was considered to be a basic mechanism universal among humans. However, by using analyses inspired by novel brain imaging technology, researchers at the University of Glasgow have discovered that cultural differences cause us to look at faces differently.

Lead researcher Dr Roberto Caldara said: "In a series of eye-movement studies, we showed that social experience has an impact on how people look at faces. Specifically we noticed a striking difference in eye movements in Westerners and East Asian observers. We found that Westerners tend to look at specific features on an individual's face such as the eyes and mouth whereas East Asian observers tend to focus on the nose or the centre of the face which allows a more general view of all the features. One possible cause of this could be that direct or excessive eye contact may be considered rude in East Asian cultures."

Alcohol use during the teen years can not only lead to alcoholism, risky sexual behavior and early childbearing, alcohol dependence (AD) has now also been linked to delayed reproduction.

"Reproductive dysfunctions include a range of menstrual disorders, sexual dysfunctions, and pregnancy complications that include spontaneous abortion or miscarriage," explained Mary Waldron, assistant professor of psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine and corresponding author for the study. "Teenagers who drink tend to have disruptions in their menstrual cycle as well as unplanned pregnancies."

A group of University of Oklahoma researchers studying the environmental fate of petroleum spills have in the process isolated a community of microorganisms capable of converting hydrocarbons into natural gas.

The researchers found that the process known as anaerobic hydrocarbon metabolism can be used to stimulate methane gas production from older, more mature oil reservoirs like those in Oklahoma. The work has now led to the recognition that similar microorganisms may also be involved in problems ranging from the deterioration of fuels to the corrosion of pipelines.

As Dr. Ronaldo Luna, associate professor of civil, architectural and environmental engineering at Missouri University of Science and Technology, watches a machine shake silt from the Mississippi River until it liquefies, he says, "This is what would happen during a major earthquake along the Mississippi River."

Researchers don’t fully understand the liquefaction process for silts (though they have a better understanding of how it works with sands) but Luna is confident, based on his tests, that a 6.5 magnitude earthquake or bigger would cause solid surfaces along the banks of the Mississippi River to turn, momentarily, into liquid.

Many of us remember that first day of kindergarten or a trip we took as a toddler but new research shows that the human brain, while able to accurately recall trivial details from the past, can also be remarkably fragile and even inventive.

In fact, people can easily create false memories of their past and a new study shows that such memories can have long-term effects on our behavior.

According to 2007 U.S. Census Bureau data, there are approximately 20 million children below the age of five in the United States, the age range of greatest susceptibility to the harmful affects of lead poisoning. Gabriel M. Filippelli, Ph.D., professor of earth sciences and department chair at Indiana University, says that about 2 percent of these children (approximately 400,000) have lead poisoning, many in epidemic proportions.

Writing in the August issue of the journal Applied Geochemistry, Filippelli conducted a literature review of studies of urban soils as a persistent source of lead poisoning and also investigated the lead burden in the soils from a number of cities, including Indianapolis. His findings reveal that older cities like Indianapolis have a very high lead burden resulting in a lead poisoning epidemic among their youngest citizens.

Filippelli suggests two possible remedies, one of which he believes to be feasible from both the practical and monetary perspectives and doable almost immediately.

With oil prices skyrocketing, the search is on for efficient and sustainable biofuels. Research published this month in Agronomy Journal examines one biofuel crop idea, the corn stover made up of the leaves and stalks of corn plants that are left in the field after harvesting the edible corn grain. Corn stover could supply as much as 25% of the biofuel crop needed by 2030, according to some estimates.

Scientists with the USDA-ARS Agroecosystem Unit located at the University of Nebraska examined the long-term sustainability of using corn stover as a biofuel crop. They note when corn stover is not harvested as a biofuel crop, it can be left on the fields to restore vital nutrients to the soil. Full-scale harvesting of corn stover may deplete the soil.