inversion layers and government entities

Today I got to wondering if there was an inversion layer (a layer of warmer air sitting over a cooler one) that was holding in the pollen earlier this week, and what I think I learned was why outdoor allergens seem to bother me less after about 11 am, when the breeze picks up.

Now, keeping in mind I learned this from part of a discussion of radio wave propagation on a ham radio site and I could be wrong about this and the allergens, I'm pretty sure that if you detect the following conditions, you have an inversion layer:

• a very clear sky,
• dead still air, and
• a warm or hot temperature.

The inversion layer can start the night before if similar conditions are present, and they are present a lot around here, just not in the afternoon, so maybe that's why I feel better in the afternoon.

In other news, the FDA said something highly unbelievable about marijuana, and the CDC sponsored a study on chronic fatigue. (Maybe the FDA should hand marijuana studies over to the CDC, seeing as there's a link to schizophrenia.) Anyway, I'm pleased somebody is learning something about chronic fatigue, even if the results, as presented by this article, sound as though they weren't quite sure what they learned. (Not that I should talk, with the ham site and the allergens.)

The results, published in more than a dozen reports and commentaries in the April issue of the journal Pharmacogenomics, released yesterday, suggest that many cases of chronic fatigue have links to a handful of brain- and immune system-related genes that either harbor small mutations or are working abnormally for other reasons.

What I get out of this sentence is that this study was really important and found malfunctioning genes. They have no idea why the genes malfunction, which is fine. They can study that next.