Stanford, California - Recognizing the faces of family and friends seems vital to social interaction. However, some individuals lack this essential skill. Those with a condition called face blindness, or prosopagnosia, can see eyes, lips and other facial features, yet they cannot remember the whole picture, a face. The condition touches one in 50 people, including actor Brad Pitt, neurologist Oliver Sacks and primatologist Jane Goodall. Now Stanford neuroscientists have discovered that the structure of the wiring in the brain is key to predicting the condition.

Stanford, California - Biology relies upon the precise activation of specific genes to work properly. If that sequence gets out of whack, or one gene turns on only partially, the outcome can often lead to a disease.

Berkeley, California - Goldie Blumenstyk, who’s followed the world of colleges and universities for more than a quarter-century as a writer for the Chronicle of Higher Education, titled her new book American Higher Education in Crisis? What Everyone Needs to Know. A reader need only peek at the introduction to find her answer.

Sacramento, California - Through funding from the federal Department of Health and Human Services’ Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's Now is the Time Advancing Wellness and Resilience in Education for State Educational Agencies (NITT-AWARE-SEA) grant, the California Department of Education (CDE) will develop a comprehensive, coordinated, and integrated partnership with multiple service systems to help address critical mental health needs of California's kindergarten through twelfth grade (K-12) students.

Berkeley, California - Lentils probably aren’t going to knock bacon off the nation’s plates anytime soon. But “Lentil Underground,” a new book by a recent Ph.D. and ongoing researcher at UC Berkeley, makes the case that lentils - and similar legumes - could help restore American farmland and farmers whose soil and profits have been depleted by decades of industrial agriculture.

Vandenberg Air Force Base, California - NASA successfully launched its first Earth satellite designed to collect global observations of the vital soil moisture hidden just beneath our feet.