“For centuries, doctors have recognized women’s vulnerability to depression and proposed a variety of explanations. The female of the species, with her ‘excitable nervous system,’ was thought to wilt under the strain of menstruation and childbirth, or later, the pressures of work and family.

But researchers are now constructing more scientific theories to explain why women are nearly twice as likely as men to become depressed. Social bias and women’s higher rates of physical and sexual abuse and poverty, experts say, clearly play a role. But scientists are also studying genes that may predispose girls and women to the disorder.” — New York Times

Pretty soon, you’ll be able to get broadband Internet over your power lines. Maybe you already can.” — Slate

This one is personal; you have probably never heard of him unless you were at Harvard and maybe not even then, unless you were involved with the msnamed Bureau of Study Counsel, which does much more than (or, to put it differently, anything but) study counsel, as is true of many university counseling agencies these days.

My clinical interests, which eventually led to my career in psychiatry, emerged early. I was lucky enough to have been able to make arrangements (unconventional and perhaps usually ill-advisedly premature during one’s undergraduate training) to include an intensive clinical piece as an ongoing independent study. I am saddened to learn of the death of the inspirational man who was my tutor and mentor for this course of study, Kiyo Morimoto, who quietly but incontrovertibly shaped my humanism, passion and humor in my field*. You can read the obituary summarizing an inspiring and heartwarming life here. — Boston Globe

*In the same breath, I cannot fail to mention the incomparable, passionate Carol Cole and the late John Perry.