"Paris Is A Party:" Responding To Tragedy France Turns To Hemingway

"One of the most popular books in France this week is a classic: A Moveable Feast, by Ernest Hemingway. Its title in French is Paris est une fete — or "Paris is a party." The book is finding new readers — and it's also being left as a tribute to those who lost their lives one week ago."

"The Hemingway memoir, published posthumously in 1964, is being celebrated for what it, in turn, celebrates: Paris as an exciting place of ideas, a nexus of people who love life and the arts. The book is set in the 1920s, as Paris recovered from the oppressions of World War I."

"Saying that copies of the book "have been flying off bookshop shelves,' Agence France Presse reports, "Paperback versions are being deposited, along with flowers and candles, in front of bullet-ridden windows at one of the Paris bars targeted by the jihadist gunmen.'"

E-Coli Bacteria Can Transfer Antibiotic Resistance To Other Bacteria

"Colistin is the antibiotic that doctors use as a last resort to wipe out dangerous bacteria."

"'It's really been kept as the last drug in the locker when all else has failed,' says Dr. Jim Spencer, a senior lecturer in microbiology at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom."

"But now Spencer reports that E. coli bacteria, which can cause kidney failure as well as urinary tract and other infections, have changed. In an article published in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases, Spencer and his co-authors tell how researchers in China have found that the bacteria not only are increasingly resistant to colistin, but have developed a mechanism to transfer resistance to neighboringbacteria. And those bacteria don't even have to be the same strain as those that originally developed the resistance. So bacteria that cause other health problems could be affected."

If Fish Is Brain Food Can Fish Oil Boost Brains Too?

"As a culture, we tend to ignore the advice to eat more fish. On average, Americans eat about 3.5 ounces of seafood per week. (Think a can of tuna or sardines)."

"But evidence shows that consumption of 8 or more ounces of seafood per week can reduce the risk of death from cardiovascular disease, and some studies have linked a regular fish habit over a lifetime to a lower risk of cognitive decline as well."

"What's more, some research suggests that regular fish consumption among mothers can boost cognitive development in their children."

"'Omega-3s [found in fish] are important, we think, because they reduce inflammation and help neurons function well,' says researcher Jospeph Hibbeln of the National Institutes of Health."

For Inca Road Builders Extreme Terrain Was No Obstacle

"One of history's greatest engineering feats is one you rarely hear of. It's the Inca Road, parts of which still exist today across much of South America."

"Back in the day — more than 500 years ago — commoners like me wouldn't have been able to walk on the Inca Road, known as Qhapaq Ñan in the Quechua language spoken by the Inca , without official permission."

"Fortunately, I have Peruvian archaeologist Ramiro Matos by my side. He is the lead curator of an exhibition at the National Museum of the American Indian called 'The Great Inka Road: Engineering an Empire.'"

Peek Inside the Little Black Books of Famous American Artists

"It might be considered nosey to thumb through someone else's little black address book, but that doesn't bother Mary Savig, curator of manuscripts at the Smithsonian Archives of American Art. 'It is very nosey and that's why I really enjoy doing it,' she says."

"The 'Little Black Books' of some major and minor American artists are currently on view in a show at the Archives of American Art in Washington, D.C."

"'We can read correspondence and read diaries, and we can find out so much more about their process as artists, their everyday lives,' Savig explains. The books show 'the importance of their social networks, and how they would learn from each other and push each other to experiment in new ways.'"

Stephen Hawking Black Holes Are Not Eternal Prisons We Once Thought

"Stephen Hawking, who once stunned the scientific community by saying that black holes emit radiation, expounded on another groundbreaking theory on Tuesday."

"'The message of this lecture is that black holes ain't as black as they are painted. They are not the eternal prisons they were once thought,' Hawking told a meeting of experts, according to the New Scientist. 'Things can get out of a black hole both on the outside and possibly come out in another universe.'"

"This, of course, is not what you learned in physics class. What you learned is that once anything made it past a black hole's event horizon, the black hole's super strong gravitational force would suck it in forever. Any information particle sucked in by the hole would also disappear for good."

Particles From the Edge of Space Shine a Light On Fukushima

"It's one of the greatest, and most disturbing, questions of the Fukushima disaster: What happened to the nuclear fuel inside the plant? Now physicists are trying to shed some light on the problem using particles from the edge of space."

"The Fukushima accident was broadcast around the world. On March 11, 2011, an earthquake and tsunami struck the plant, knocking out cooling in three working reactors. The uranium fuel inside melted down."

"But nobody's quite sure where it went."

"'Right now we don't know where the fuel is,' says Christopher Morris, a fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico."

Snooze Alert A Sleep Disorder May Be Harming Your Body and Brain

"It's time for consumers to wake up to the risks of sleep disorders, scientists say."

"More than 50 million adults in the U.S. have a disorder such as insomnia, restless leg syndrome or sleep apnea, according to an Institute of Medicine report. And it's now clear that a lack of sleep 'not only increases the risk of errors and accidents, it also has adverse effects on the body and brain,' according to Charles Czeisler, chief of the division of sleep and circadian disorders at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston."

"Research in the past couple of decades has shown that a lack of sleep increases a person's risk for cardiovascular disease, diabetes, infections and maybe even Alzheimer's disease. Yet most sleep disorders go untreated."

In Elite Schools Vast War Chests Malcolm Gladwell Sees Obscene Inequity

"In a sharp-elbowed opinion piece in The New York Times this week, Victor Fleischer, a law professor at the University of San Diego, took several big-name schools to task for the ways that they handle their endowments."

"Fleischer cited Harvard, the University of Texas, Stanford and Princeton — but he reserved his harshest criticism for Yale University, which he says pays private equity firms $480 million a year to handle its endowment. Meanwhile, he says the school spends only $170 million dollars on financial aid for students — while tuition often rises."

"'As some of these endowments grow larger and larger, the group that benefits the most is not students; it's not faculty. It's the fund managers who manage the money,' Fleischer says. 'The point is: What is the endowment there to serve? The point is to advance teaching and research and scientific inquiry today.'"

NASA Rumors of Impending Doom Are Greatly Exaggerated

"Have you heard that a giant asteroid is due to strike Earth sometime between Sept. 15 and Sept. 28?"

"If so, you probably thought it was a hoax. And you'd be right."

"But some people who read "numerous recent blogs and web postings" about impending doom from space weren't sufficiently skeptical. NASA on Thursday sought to clarify:"

"Not one shred of evidence." Our team debunks rumors of a September doomsday asteroid. http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4692 …"

"The space agency, in a statement, said: "On one of those dates, as rumors go, there will be an impact — 'evidently' near Puerto Rico — causing wanton destruction to the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the United States and Mexico, as well as Central and South America."

To Decode Elephant Conversation You Must Feel the Jungle Rumble

"The natural world is abuzz with the sound of animals communicating — crickets, birds, even grunting fish. But scientists learning to decode these sounds say the secret signals of African elephants — their deepest rumblings — are among the most intriguing calls any animal makes."

"Katy Payne, the same biologist who recognized song in the calls of humpback whales in the 1960s, went on to help create the Elephant Listening Project in the Central African Republic in the 1980s."

"At the time, Payne's team was living in shacks in a dense jungle inhabited by hundreds of rare forest elephants. That's where one of us — Bill McQuay — first encountered the roar of an elephant in 2002, while reporting a story for an NPR-National Geographic collaboration called Radio Expeditions."

Durand Ruel, The Art Dealer Who Liked Impressionists Before They Were Cool

"It might seem unusual for an exhibit to focus on a man who sold paintings rather than the artists who painted them. But there was one particular 19th century Paris art dealer who shaped the art market of his day — and ours — by discovering artists who became world-wide favorites. He's now the subject of a major exhibition in Philadelphia."

"Paul Durand-Ruel was quite the shopper. He was the first buyer of Renoir's Luncheon of the Boating Party, Monet's Stacks of Wheat (End of Day Autumn), some 100 works in the Musée d'Orsay's impressionist collection in Paris, and more than than 100 paintings in Dr. Albert Barnes' Foundation in Philadelphia — all purchased from Durand-Ruel."

"'He bought over 1,000 Monets, 1,500 Renoirs, 800 Pissarros, 400 Sisleys, 400 Cassatts, and about 200 Manets,' says Philadelphia Museum of Art curator Jennifer Thompson. 'So over 5,000 impressionist pictures all told.'"

Guzzling 9000 Years of History With the Comic Book Story of Beer

"In ancient times, farmers worried about losing precious grain to spoilage during wet winters. So they figured out how to malt grain and brew it into beer, thus preserving a nutritious source of calories. In The Comic Book Story of Beer, due out in September, we get a graphical tour of such pivotal moments — from the cradle of agriculture to the modern-day craft beer heyday."

"Illustrator Aaron McConnell, writer Jonathan Hennessey and professional brewer Mike Smith cover a lot of ground in 173 pages. We learn that in ancient Rome, women were the brewers, and their homes became popular hangout spots – the first pub houses, really. The covered beer stein was invented during the Black Death, when piles of bodies on the streets attracted flies and it was necessary to keep swarms of them out of drinks. Lagers were meanwhile born of a 19th-century act of industrial espionage."

"We spoke with the authors about the inspiration for the project and the challenges and joys of boiling 9,000 years of human history, economics, culture and, of course, beer into a graphic novel."

The Grateful Dead's Laid Back yet Surprisingly Shrewd Business Plan

"For the 50th anniversary of the Grateful Dead's founding, the band will perform three shows — their last — in Chicago this weekend. According to Billboard magazine, the "Fare Thee Well" concerts will bring in an estimated $50 million. That's pretty impressive, considering that band's lead guitarist died two decades ago."

"If there's one thing the Grateful Dead has proven it knows how to do well, it's improvise. The song 'Dark Star' alone launched hundreds of unique live jams, and that freeform lifestyle followed the band offstage."

"'Improvisation became the one point in their very changeable universe, applied not only to music, but also to business,' says Dennis McNally, the band's biographer and former publicist."

On the Rebound, Panthers Prowl Expanding Swath of Swath of Land In Florida

"In Florida, the official state animal triggers mixed feelings. The Florida panther has been on the endangered species list for nearly 50 years. From a low point in the 1970s when there were only about 20 panthers in the wild, the species has rebounded."

"Now, nearly 200 range throughout southwest Florida. And some officials, ranchers and hunters in the state say that may be about enough."

"Florida panthers are a subspecies of the cougar or mountain lion. They're slightly smaller than their cousins, but like them, the panthers need lots of room to roam."

Checking DNA Against Elephants Hints At How Mammoths Got Woolly

"Scientists say they've found a bit of DNA in woolly mammoths that could help explain how these huge beasts were so well-adapted to live in the cold of the last ice age."

"Woolly mammoths had long shaggy fur, small tails and ears to minimize frostbite, and a lot of fat to help stay warm as they roamed the tundra more than 12,000 years ago."

"'They have this weird hump on their back, which is thought to be something like a camel hump — sort of a fat deposit that stored water and energy for the cold, dark winters,' says Vincent Lynch, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago."

How Your Brain Remembers Where You Parked The Car

"If you run into an old friend at the train station, your brain will probably form a memory of the experience. And that memory will forever link the person you saw with the place where you saw them."

"For the first time, researchers have been able to see that sort of link being created in people's brains, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Neuron. The process involves neurons in one area of the brain that change their behavior as soon as someone associates a particular person with a specific place."

"'This type of study helps us understand the neural code that serves memory,' says Itzhak Fried, an author of the paper and head of the Cognitive Neurophysiology Laboratory at UCLA. It also could help explain how diseases like Alzheimer's make it harder for people to form new memories, Fried says."

US Troops Tested By Race In Secret World War II Chemical Experiments

"As a young U.S. Army soldier during World War II, Rollins Edwards knew better than to refuse an assignment."

"When officers led him and a dozen others into a wooden gas chamber and locked the door, he didn't complain. None of them did. Then, a mixture of mustard gas and a similar agent called lewisite was piped inside."

"'It felt like you were on fire,' recalls Edwards, now 93 years old. 'Guys started screaming and hollering and trying to break out. And then some of the guys fainted. And finally they opened the door and let us out, and the guys were just, they were in bad shape.'"

The Man Behind the Most Interesting Man Is Interesting Too

"When he first moved to Los Angeles, he worked as a garbage truck driver."

"He's acted in Westerns alongside John Wayne — even though he couldn't ride a horse."

"His big break was acting in Dos Equis beer commercials."

"He is Jonathan Goldsmith ... the actor who plays 'The Most Interesting Man in the World.'"

"As it turns out, Goldsmith is pretty interesting himself."

"The garbage truck driver-turned-Hollywood actor got his start with small parts in western movies."

Chocolate, Chocolate, Its Good For Your Heart Study Finds

"Here's a sweet notion: Eat a little chocolate each day and you could be doing your heart a favor."

"A new study published in the journal Heart found that habitual chocolate eaters had a lower risk of cardiovascular disease and strokes compared to people who didn't eat chocolate."

"So, what is it about chocolate that could possibly lead to such a benefit? Well, when you strip out the sugar and milk that's added to chocolate, you're left with the cocoa bean. And it's the compounds in the cocoa that researchers are most interested in."

"The study is part of a growing body of evidence that suggests the bioactive plant compounds found in cocoa beans, called polyphenols, may help protect against heart disease."