Io, the innermost of Jupiter's four large "Galilean" moons, is about the same size as Earth's moon, some 2,300 miles across, but it is very different than our moon. So different it is the only other place in the solar system that shares one trait that Earth has - volcanoes erupting extremely hot lava.

Because of Io's low gravity, large volcanic eruptions produce an umbrella of debris that rises high into space and that can be seen from Earth. Last August, astronomers did just that, capturing three massive volcanic eruptions within a two-week period.

It may be that these rare "outbursts", sending material hundreds of miles above the surface, might be much more common than astronomers thought.

Hydraulic fracturing is in the news because more natural gas has meant substantially fewer carbon emissions - and it has also been implicated in a variety of environmental issues.

Man is doing what nature has always done, albeit on a different time scale. A new GSA BULLETIN study  examines how long it takes natural Earth processes to form hydraulic fractures and whether the formation is driven by sediment compaction, oil and gas generation or something else. Plus, in order to make environmental models about modern hydraulic fracturing production, it's important to know what role these natural fractures play.

Why are scientists at the apex of their careers least likely to adopt new technology? The quick answer is obvious, they got to where they are doing things their way and there is no reason to fix something unbroken. Younger scientists don't have much choice because they don't write the checks, the use the tools the principal investigator has.

It's scientists in the middle most likely to adopt new tools, or adopt the tools of collaborators and even competitors.

What it means for Thermo Fisher Scientific is that high-status scientists may not be the most effective use of their marketing budget. For Science 2.0 it means that adoption will not happen from the top down, counting on that will slow the pace. The sweet spot for influencers is in the middle.

This not-so-distant "Internet of Things" will extend connectivity to billions of devices. Sensors could be embedded in everyday objects to help monitor and track everything from the structural safety of bridges to the health of your heart.

But having a way to cheaply power and connect these devices to the Internet has kept this from taking off. People are sick of batteries. They are sick of having to change them and they are irritated when they can't change them. In a world of information, there will need to be battery-free sensors.

Scientists have grafted neurons reprogrammed from skin cells into the brains of mice with long-term stability for the first time. Six months after implantation, the neurons had become fully functionally integrated into the brain. 

That's equivalent to about 20 years in human terms. Successful, stable implantation of neurons raises hope for future therapies that will replace sick neurons with healthy ones in the brains of Parkinson's disease patients, for example. 

Was Spanish hurdler María José Martínez-Patiño a male or female athlete? If science can't answer such a basic biological question as that, how can it determine if Lance Armstrong took performance-enhancing drugs? Yet the answer is sometimes cloudy. 

Males and females compete in different categories because men are biologically different. If men competed against women in many events, the participation of women would be scant because men would hold win all of the events and hold most of the records.  Martínez-Patiño
was a successful hurdler in the Spanish nationals but a persistent rumor - invoked again and again by female competitors - turned out to be true; Martínez-Patiño