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A barely bruised brain can send out molecular SOS signals in the blood for days after an injury, researchers report this week in JAMA Neurology.

The finding suggests that new blood tests, already in development to detect those signals, may be able to identify even the mildest concussions well after a knock to the head.

“It is common for patients who have had a concussion or mild [traumatic brain injury] not to seek immediate medical attention,” the authors write. Kids, in particular, might have delayed or mild symptoms and go without treatment right away. Letting a concussion go undiagnosed may mean returning to work or school too soon, thwarting the brain's efforts to heal. This can lead to dizziness, memory loss, depression, and headaches. And if a patient returns to play or sports too quickly, further hits to the head could lead to more severe or even permanent damage.

Jeff Bezos stands next to a nozzle of a BE-4 engine in his Blue Origin rocket factory. (credit: Eric Berger)

For more than a decade Jeff Bezos kept his Blue Origin rocket company under a shroud. Engineers worked away at four versions of engines in a rocket factory near Seattle, and then tested those machines in a remote area of West Texas. All the while the spaceflight industry wondered what Bezos and his billions were up to.

In November the plan became more clear when Blue Origin pulled off the remarkable feat of flying its New Shepard space vehicle to 100.5km and then returning it successfully to the ground near its West Texas launch site. It then re-flew the booster.

After these successes Bezos began to open up Blue Origin a little bit. In March he invited Ars and a handful of other media outlets for an unprecedented tour of the Washington state-based rocket factory, and talked expansively about the company's plans. His philosophy about secrecy, he said, was that he didn't want to make unwarranted claims about Blue Origin's capabilities until they could be demonstrated.

Welcome to Ars Cardboard, our weekend look at tabletop games! Check out our complete board gaming coverage right here—and let us know what you think.

Run.

When the zombie apocalypse inevitably comes, I sure hope I’m not stuck in the small town that’s the setting for Dead of Winter. Because boy, are those people just plain screwed. Traversing the hostile wasteland in the vain hope of scavenging supplies, fending off the never-ending onslaught of the undead—the end of the world is rough enough without a bunch of backstabbing friends making things harder.

Star Trek: The Ultimate Voyage

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Back in January, a production group called CineConcerts launched a commemoration to science fiction’s greatest 50-year-old franchise, Star Trek. CineConcerts has been around for a while, pairing visual media from film and TV with a live symphony orchestra to allow concert goers to experience well-known scenes from their favorite shows with a more music-forward approach. With the Star Trek franchise, CineConcerts will play some of the series’ best-known musical themes. And the group will project montages from well-known parts of Star Trek movies and TV shows or individual scenes from the TV shows on a big-screen timed precisely to specific musical cues.

The tour has a little over a month left in its run and a couple dozen more cities to hit, including Los Angeles, Rapid City, South Dakota, and Paris, France. Before the commemoration draws to a close, Ars caught up with Brady Beaubien, a producer and writer for the Star Trek concert tour (called "The Ultimate Voyage"). Beaubien is also a co-founder of the CineConcerts group, which has produced similar live symphony orchestra concerts focusing on films like Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Gladiator, The Godfather, It’s A Wonderful Life, and A Christmas Dream.

Beaubien said he was attracted to the Star Trek project because he grew up watching The Next Generation. "I’ve always been a huge Star Trek fan. It’s had a profound affect on my intellectual development and enhanced my traditional education,” he told Ars. “When we started talking to Paramount about creating a special experience [to celebrate Star Trek’s 50^th anniversary], this seemed like a wonderful way to give people a new way to experience it. It seemed like the model that we had developed with CineConcerts was uniquely suited [to the franchise].”

(credit: Leon Homan)

Hollywood's lobbying arm, the Motion Picture Association of America, is opposing a proposed Minnesota revenge porn law on grounds that it could overly restrict speech. This is the same MPAA that fiercely supported the Stop Online Piracy Act of 2012. Known as SOPA, many claimed that legislation would also curtail free speech because SOPA could lead to the removal of domains that host infringing material.

In a letter to Minnesota lawmakers, the MPAA said HF 27411 "could limit the distribution of a wide array of mainstream, Constitutionally protected material, including items of legitimate news, commentary, and historical interest. These items are part of news, public affairs, entertainment or sports programming, and are distributed in motion pictures, television programs, audiovisual works of all kinds, via the Internet and other media." The group added that "images of Holocaust victims, or prisoners at Abu Ghraib, or the Pulitzer-Prize winning photograph entitled 'Napalm Girl'—which shows a young girl running screaming from her village, naked, following a Napalm attack—could be prohibited under the terms of this legislation."

The bill cleared a House committee on Friday. If approved, it would add to the growing number of revenge porn bills nationwide—now at 27. There is no federal revenge porn law, and to varying degrees, these state revenge porn laws prohibit sharing sexually explicit photos of people without their consent. The MPAA's bone of contention on Minnesota's bill is that the person who releases the explicit photos or videos doesn't have to mentally want to harm or humiliate the person in the images.

(credit: J. M. Olson/NOAA)

In the popular fiction series, Jeeves eats a lot of fish; Bertie Wooster thinks that that’s why he’s so smart. In real life we should all probably be eating more fish given how healthy it is, but can we do that in a way that keeps fish populations healthy, too?

A visit to the fishmonger can be daunting, and Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch App doesn’t necessarily make it any easier. Fresh or frozen? Wild or farmed? Local or imported? What are the best options for your body, your wallet, the planet?

You and I are not the only ones to grapple with these issues; environmental scientists in New York and California did, too. Specifically, they wondered how reform would impact fisheries, which are defined as the wild and cultivated regions where fish are caught, as well as the act and occupation of catching fish. They modeled two types of reform—one that aimed to maximize the economic value of fisheries, and one that aimed to maximize their long term catch. They were interested in how these reforms would affect the fisheries’ profit, catch, and the biomass of all the fish in the sea by the year 2050. Turns out that if fisheries were better managed, all three variables would improve.