Dusty air blowing across the Pacific from Asia and Africa is playing a critical role in precipitation patterns throughout the drought-stricken western U.S.

The exact chemical make-up of that dust, including microbes found in it, is the key to how much rain and snow falls from clouds throughout the region and knowing this could help better predict rain events, as well as explain how air pollution from a variety of sources influences regional climate in general.

As countries try to rid themselves of toxic mercury pollution, some people are still slathering and even injecting creams containing the metal onto or under their skin to lighten it, putting themselves and others at risk for serious health problems.

The good news is, researchers can now identify these creams and intervene much faster than before using total reflection x-ray fluorescence. 

Feedback from 130 16 to 18 year olds of diverse social and economic backgrounds living in different parts of the country - a northern industrial city in the UK, London, and a rural area in the southwest of the UK - reveals an oppressive culture around anal sex, with some young men apparently neglecting or not caring about young women's consent or pleasure - both when they have anal sex and when they talk about it with their friends.

The qualitative, longitudinal study interviews explored the range and meaning of different sexual practices, and included nine group and 71 individual in-depth discussions in 2010, and further interviews of 43 of the in-depth interviewees in 2011.

Actor comedian Robin Williams committed suicide after his wife went to their bedroom for the evening and he went to a guest room - there were no rumblings of trouble in the relationship so presumably he was being considerate and his poor sleep would have kept her awake. He had suffered from bouts of depression for decades but even without that, the poor sleep quality could have been a warning sign, finds a new paper.

Poor sleep quality, independent of a depressed mood, appears to be associated with an increased risk for suicide in older adults, finds a study written by Rebecca A. Bernert, Ph.D., of the Stanford University School of Medicine, California, and colleagues.

 Humans train animals by rewarding them with tasty treats and trainers couple the reward with a sound, such as a buzz or a whistle. Once the animal has mastered the task, the trainer stops dispensing food, relying instead on the whistle or buzzer to inform the animal that it has performed successfully and that it will be rewarded - with food, but later.

Even though there may be no food reward at the time, whales and dolphins still squeal in response to the sound substituted for the food reward. And Sam Ridgway found that when he trained dolphins and beluga whales to switch off a sound after diving hundreds of meters, the animals produced the same squeals of victory when the sound stopped.  

11 years ago, DARPA predicted that there was a physics-induced train wreck coming straight at the computer chip industry; the limits of what electricity and existing materials can do. Even then, quantum computers were touted as the answer, with black box magic occurring between the existing and the vision.