Bipolar discipline
Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston has disciplined three child psychiatrists for failing to declare payments worth millions of dollars from drug companies. The most prominent, Joseph Biederman, pioneered drug treatment for bipolar disorder in children. The three have apologised and say their 鈥渕istakes were honest ones鈥�.
We heart you, pi
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A backlash has begun against a proposal to replace the constant pi. Tau supporters say their constant, equal to two pi, makes calculations simpler. Now a website called The Pi Manifesto, written by the creator of the Spiked Math web comic, suggests that tau is misleading and actually makes some calculations more complex.
Black Yellowstone
Thousands of litres of oil have gushed into the Yellowstone river from a ruptured pipeline owned by Exxon Mobil in Laurel, Montana. The US Environmental Protection Agency estimates that as much as 160,000 litres of oil have escaped since the pipe split on 1 July.
Go on, use that phone
Adult cellphone users are unlikely to face extra risks of developing brain tumours, concludes a review in Environmental Health Perspectives (). Last month, the World Health Organization classified phones as only a 鈥減ossible carcinogen鈥�, the same as bathroom talcum powder and coffee.
Polluted brains
Is air pollution harming our brains? Mice exposed to air pollution for nine months had problems with spatial learning and memory, and displayed more 鈥渄epressive鈥� behaviours. They also had damage to their hippocampi, parts of the brain involved in learning ().