You can always tell when someone does not have a lot of experience in something. They are anxious, they start too soon, perhaps confused. With practice and training, situations become rote. Athletes talk about how time slows down when they have locked into what they are doing.

Older brains are more experienced, obviously, and a new paper in Topics in Cognitive Science finds that rather than being a decline in brain function, older brains may take longer to process because they have ever increasing amounts of knowledge.

Near the center of Antarctica, measurements from CryoSat - which exists to make comprehensive measurements of the polar regions in an unusually high-inclination orbit and latitudes of 88° north and south -  have detected an unusual pattern in the ice sheet’s elevation. 

CryoSat carries a radar altimeter that can ‘see’ through clouds and in the dark, providing continuous measurements over areas like central Antarctica that are prone to bad weather and long periods of darkness.  The radar measures the surface height variation of ice by timing the interval between the transmission and reception of very short radar pulses as the satellite orbits Earth. CryoSat collects data over Antarctica while passing on northbound and southbound orbits.

A new protocol for conducting Miller-Urey Experiments is comprised of a modern and simplified approach to the method used by Dr. Stanley Miller and Dr. Harold Urey in 1953. Their research evaluated the possibility of organic compounds important for the origin of life to have been formed abiologically on early Earth. 

A new paper finds that concussions are common among middle-school girls who play soccer, and most continue to play with symptoms.

Using a small sample of email survey and interviews, the authors evaluated the frequency and duration of concussions in young female soccer players, as well as whether the injuries resulted in stopping play and seeking medical attention.  There are no injury-tracking systems for younger players but the background information says that sports-related concussions account for 1.6 to 3.8 million injuries in the United States annually, including about 50,000 soccer-related concussions among high school players.

Someone who wants to commit suicide, or a homicide, is not prevented by a lack of guns, but access makes it easier. 

A meta-analysis, a statistical look at various studies that shows patterns, published in Annals of Internal Medicine, pooled results from 15 investigations, slightly more than half of which were done after a 1996 federal law prohibited the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from funding research that promotes gun control.

When tragedies happen, politicians aim to yell on the floors of Congress about how tragedies must be stopped. 

And gun tragedies should be entirely preventable, claim gun ban proponents. Just ban guns. It may make sense to assume that states in which there are tight laws make that state safer and lead to less gun crime, but that data show that the very opposite is true. You can't get a concealed weapon permit in Illinois but Chicago leads the US in gun murders. In 2013, a concealed carry bill was passed, making Illinois the final state to issue concealed gun carry permits.