For patients in nursing homes, treatment with antipsychotic medicines is pretty much routine.

Though the drugs were developed to treat schizophrenia, they're also used to manage the dementia-related behavior of elderly patients. Up to a third of patients in nursing homes get the drugs, despite their risks.

One of science fiction's jobs is to give humanity a map of where we're headed. From Jules Verne to William Gibson, sci-fi authors have described their versions of the future, and how people might live in it.

Those ideas came up in a recent conversation I had with Brian David Johnson, who works for Intel as a futurist — a title that gives him one of the tech world's cooler business cards.

There was a 0.9 percent drop in sales of new homes in January vs. December, the Census Bureau and Department of Housing and Urban Development just reported.

The annual sales rate, 321,000, was still 3.5 percent above the pace of January 2011, however.

And The Associated Press notes that the dip in January from December may have partly been due to the fact that "the government said the final quarter of 2011 was stronger than first estimated."

Good morning.

Our early headlines:

-- U.S., Other 'Friends Of Syria,' To Call On Syria's Assad To Step Aside.

-- Obama's Tax Plan Is 'Step Forward,' But Not Enough, Key Republican Says.

In a move that likely opens him up to some obvious Democratic attacks, Mitt Romney is turning to members of President George W. Bush's economic brain trust to craft what he hopes will be a winning economic message.

Campaigning in Michigan Thursday night, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney reached out to Tea Party voters — a segment of the party that he's had a hard time winning over in previous states during this primary season.

Most folks who wake up feeling crummy will sit down with a computer or smartphone before they sit down with a doctor.

They might search the Web for remedies or tweet about their symptoms. And that's why scientists who track disease are turning to the Internet for early warning signs of epidemics.

"Surveillance is one of the cornerstones of public health," says Philip Polgreen, an epidemiologist at the University of Iowa. "It all depends on having not only accurate data, but timely data."

As Syrian security forces continue to pound the city of Homs and surrounding areas, "the United States, Europe and Arab countries were set Friday to back a proposal for Syria's president to step aside and allow in humanitarian assistance to end a brutal crackdown against opponents," The Associated Press writes.

President Obama's proposal to cut the top corporate tax rate from its current 35 percent to 28 percent (and in some cases, to 25 percent) is "a good step forward and I welcome looking at the details," the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee said today on Morning Edition.