Vapor losses to the walls of laboratory chambers haven't been properly factored in, according to a new PNAS paper, and that has caused researchers to underestimate the formation of secondary organic aerosol in the atmosphere. It also brings up a lot of questions about what other simplistic mistakes have led to all kinds of air quality claims.

Vapor losses can suppress the formation of secondary organic aerosol, which in turn has contributed to the under-prediction of secondary organic aerosol (SOA) in climate and air quality models. Secondary organic aerosols are formed primarily through chemistry that occurs in the gas phase.

The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey  - BOSS - is the largest component of the third Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-III) and pioneered the use of quasars to map density variations in intergalactic gas at high redshifts, tracing the structure of the young universe.

BOSS charts the history of the universe's expansion and new measures of large-scale structure have yielded the most precise measurement of expansion since galaxies first formed.  

Is there a link between maternal obesity during pregnancy and the risk of developmental disorders in a child? In the wide world of epigenetics and causalation there can be, because no one can prove there can't be. However, if obesity is a link at all, paternal obesity could be a greater risk factor than maternal obesity, according to a new paper from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. 

Dr. Pål Surén claims to be the first to study the role of paternal obesity in autism and emphasizes that this is still speculation on its way to becoming a hypothesis. Surén
notes it requires much more research before anyone can discuss possible causal relationships but they have what they have. 

Antipsychotic medications are often used for in 'second-generation' form - that is, for unlabeled indications, such as treatment of children and adolescents with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Currently, atypical antipsychotic medications are FDA approved for use only in youth for schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and irritability associated with autism. To date, no atypical antipsychotic agent has an FDA-labeled indication for use in behavioral disorders in children and adolescents.

Each year prostate tissue samples are taken from over a million men around the world, in most cases using 12 large biopsy needles, to check whether they have prostate cancer.

Surely in 2014 something more modern can be developed, especially when 70 percent of men getting those don't have cancer, it's unnecessarily painful and is also costly to carry out.

A patient-friendly examination, which drastically reduces the need for biopsies, and may even eliminate them altogether, has been developed at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), together with AMC Amsterdam and will be presented at the European Association of Urology Congress in Stockholm next week.

Of the uncertainties facing climate modelers, climate feedbacks from decomposition by soil microbes are among the biggest. 

The dynamics among soil microbes allow them to work more efficiently and flexibly as they break down organic matter – spewing less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than previously thought, according to a new study from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and the University of Vienna published in Ecology Letters.