Multidisciplinary collaborative research teams are essential in modern day science - climate scientists need to make more accurate numerical models and genome data in biology can be overwhelming and that means working with experts in other fields  – but working as part of a team with experts outside a researcher's discipline can create its own problems so a group of researchers has published a commentary outlining a new field of study that could help resolve problems facing interdisciplinary research teams.

The new area of study, which they called the "science of team science," or SciTS (rhymes with sights), would focus on what works and what doesn't when teams of scientists are working together to accomplish an overarching research goal.

Researchers say they have found 13 genes linked to human body mass.

Starting with DNA samples extracted from Icelanders' white blood cells banked in 1991 and 2002 by scientists there as part of the AGES–Reykjavik study of individuals in the general population, scientists used a customized, genome-wide profiling method dubbed CHARM (comprehensive high-throughput arrays for relative methylation) to look for regions that were the most variable, all chemically marked by DNA methylation. 

The DNA methylation analyses revealed epigenetic fingerprints which are unique to each individual and remain stable over time and may also be associated with various common traits including risks for common, complex diseases such as cancer and other conditions. 

To cure global warming we have to trade some acid rain - at least given current battery technology, which uses toxic heavy metals.

Obviously, plants have a much better solution and we have written about it often - artificial photosynthesis - but despite nature being our best example of efficiency, she isn't easy to duplicate.    But a group of chemists say they have made a step towards that, by discovering a new way to pass electrons back and forth between two molecules.  Understanding the electron transfer processes in these molecules provides a way to design organic materials for storing electrical energy that could then be retrieved for later use - an organic battery.

It's been a mantra that more money has to be spent on outreach for women in academia, or even quotas implemented.  Why?   Women PhDs are now the majority, at least in the US.   This was an obvious trend since there were more underclass and graduate program females (60%).

But like any sort of cultural agenda, it is perpetual, so now it will be the case that not enough department heads are female.  This was the same in the NBA, where after it became 70% black there were no calls to recruit more whites or latinos, but rather calls to have 70% of the coaches be black.