A European experimental group reports to have measured the probability of production of vortices in a bagel-cheese-bagel setup of superconducting and insulating rings as a function of the rate of cooling below the critical temperature, in agreement with the Kibble-Zurek predictions (square root of the cooling rate). This is an in-principle test of the cooling theory of the Universe in its first microseconds of life. Also, the measurement is claimed to be "the only condensed matter experiment to date to have measured a scaling exponent with any reliability."
Popper, Bayes and the inverse problem
Albert Tarantola, a geophysicist in Paris, presents a model of solving the "inverse problem" (using the result of measurements to infer the values of the parameters representing a system) which is in accordance to the Popperian view of scientific method. I find the text to be a little divergent at parts (links to evolutionary psychology of humans are at best amusing) but the essence of the argument is worth remembering: "observations cannot produce models, they can only falsify models."