Carbon monoxide is known as the "silent killer" because it is imperceptible and lethal. Most homes carry detectors.

We think of it as artificial, due to car exhaust and such, but it is produced naturally in humans and animals, and some medical researchers have even evaluated the gas as a treatment for diabetes, heart attacks, sepsis, and other illnesses. Researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego have studied carbon monoxide's natural characteristics and limitations by studying the gas in one of the world's best divers: the elephant seal.

Zinc supplements reduce diarrhea, one of the biggest killers of kids under five, and other infections in malnourished children, according to a review in The Cochrane Library. 

Zinc is a micronutrient with important roles in growth and in the immune, nervous and reproductive systems. The human body cannot make it, so it has to come from our diet. It is estimated that more than 1 in 6 people globally are deficient in zinc and that around 1 in every 58 deaths in children under five is related to zinc deficiency. Zinc deficiency is common in Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Latin America.

What makes the perfect beer foam? Is it nucleation in the glass? Beer is well-traveled ground on Science 2.0 and that means beer foam has been covered as well.

The biggest advice. Be careful with the detergent you use to wash your glass. An already lipid-optimized brew will not benefit from extra fat left over by detergent.

Cornell food researchers focus on lipids too, barley lipid transfer protein No. 1, aka LTP1.

Bitter compounds found in hops, like iso-alpha acids, are important to brewers, says Cornell's Karl J. Siebert, principal investigator and author of "Recent Discoveries in Beer Foam" in the Journal of the American Society of Brewing Chemists.

Can using a well move a mountain? It will if the well is big enough.

Winter rains and summer groundwater pumping in California's Central Valley make the Sierra Nevada and Coast Mountain Ranges sink and rise.

How much? A few millimeters each year. That doesn't sound like a lot but it creaes stress on the state's faults that could increase the risk of an earthquake.

Gradual depletion of the Central Valley aquifer due to groundwater pumping also raises these mountain ranges by a similar amount - about the thickness of a dime - each year, according to a new paper in Nature. That cumulative rise over the past 150 years could be up to 6 inches, according to calculations by the geophysicists. 

U.S. law requires posting summarized results on ClinicalTrials.gov, a service of the National Institutes of Health, within one year of study completion for certain categories of industry-sponsored trials. 

The European Union is considering following the US lead yet in some fields compliance with the U.S. law is still rather poor. 

Does it matter? There is increasing public pressure to report the results of all clinical trials. The belief if this would eliminate publication bias and improve public access but that is not evidence-based. What is the point of reading about failed industry trials? The products can't be approved, they will never be released and the start-up company behind the work will be sold off for parts soon after. 

In 2009, a report on the state of forensic science by the National Academy of Sciences noted the lack of sound science in the analysis of evidence in criminal cases across the country.

You wouldn't know it from television shows, but even the most common and long-standing forensic techniques such as fingerprinting are considered questionable - and defense attorneys have a field day promoting fear and doubt about science in the best of circumstances. 

Your local multiplex has been packed with superheroes lately: Robocop, Captain America and Spider-Man have wowed us this year and Superman, Batman and the Avengers are waiting in the wings.

But have you ever noticed how unlikely each hero is? A maimed policeman, a teenager bitten by a radioactive spider, an orphan who starts dressing like a bat—on the face of it, they don't sound very helpful. But each winds up saving a boatload of folks who need to be protected from the forces of evil.