Higgs Results From The Tevatron: Good and Bad News
The Difference Between Science And Philosophy
Squid, Wolves, And Global Warming
By Danna Staaf
New Bosons Might Blossom In Spring 2010
The word on the street is that Jesus is pretty t'd off at NASA.1 What mortal... Read >
Following up their 2000 discovery of an ancient reptile commonly referred... Read >
A key riddle surrounding the origin of biological molecules like RNA and DNA... Read >
According to new research conducted by scientists from the University of Maryland... Read >
I recently re-read a classic piece by J.L. Mackie (April 1955), entitled “Evil... Read >
Virtually limitless sources of energy are everywhere. One such potential source... Read >
Citation-- Callin' Out Space.Com
I'm a reasonable man, but there's a laxness in cyberspace I just can't abide with. And I'm talking to you, space.com. I'll say it straight, you may know science but you ain't giving your readers any links to the real stuff. You just echo-chamber yourself-- all your dang blag links link back to ...
More On The Omega B Baryon Significance
Last May the CDF collaboration published their observation of the baryon, a particle made by a very exotic "bss" quark triplet. The CDF result came almost one year after a similar measurement was published by the competitor experiment, D0. D0 had claimed first observation of the in ...
RuBisCo, Stars, Sagan, Drake And The "Riddle Of Life"
Today, November 16, is the 35th anniversary of a coded radar beam that was directed out into the galaxy by Carl Sagan and Frank Drake, who used the enormous radio telescope dish at Arecibo, Puerto Rico, to send a message from the Earth. Those signals are now 35 light years away. They have already ...
Mapping The Large And Small
We are aware of the large and small. We can, for example, taste and smell the earthy but invisible Streptomyces coelicolor. This soil-dwelling bacterium might have been in the first rock on Earth. Some estimates mention a time that was almost 3.8 billion years ago ...
Antarctica's Climate Much Warmer During Interglacials Than Once Thought
A new study of Antarctica's past climate reveals that temperatures during the warm periods between ice ages (interglacials) may have been higher than previously thought. The latest analysis of ice core records suggests that Antarctic temperatures may have been up to 6°C warmer than the present ...
Increasing CO2 Emissions Surpassing Nature's Sequestering Ability
A study published today in Nature Geoscience says that increasing atmospheric CO2 emissions continue to outstrip the world's natural ability to absorb carbon and claim that drastic cuts in fossil fuel emissions are the only way to mitigate climate change. The authors report that over the last 50 ...
Is Rwanda's Lake Kivu A Freshwater Time Bomb?
A potentially dangerous level of carbon dioxide and methane gas haunts Lake Kivu, the freshwater lake system bordering Rwanda and the Republic of Congo.Scientists can't say for sure if the volatile mixture at the bottom of the lake will remain still for another 1,000 years or someday explode without ...
Terra Firma: Washington State Paleontology
Over vast expanses of time, powerful tectonic forces have massaged the western edge of the continent, smashing together a seemingly endless number of islands to produce what we now know as North America and the Pacific Northwest. Intuition tells us that the earth’s crust is a permanent, fixed ...
Common Names For Uncommon Octopods
Some discussion over the identity of Nemo's little octopus friend Pearl has led me into a deep investigation of Grimpoteuthis (dumbo octopuses) and Opisthoteuthis (flapjack octopuses). Both are shortened on the antero-posteral axis (which, yes, takes some head-scratching to figure out--octopuses ...
Picture - Bacteria Talking - In Color
Bacteria are abundant in soil, water, and air as well as in the depths of the Earth's crust, organic matter, and live animals or plants. They are also abundantly social -- among themselves and with others. Not only do they interact with each other but also with their host ...
FoxJ1 Discovery Advances Understanding Of The Nervous System
Researchers from North Carolina State University have identified a gene, FoxJ1, that tells embryonic stem cells in the brain when to stop producing neurons. The research is a significant advance in understanding the development of the nervous system, which is essential to addressing conditions ...
Can Science Explain Our Foolish Financial Decisions?
Whether you're a liberal or a libertarian, it's generally accepted across the political spectrum that, in some form, the opportunity to make a lot of money drives the economic recessions and depressions the global economy experiences. Since we seem doomed to repeat the mistakes that brings us to ...
To Screen Or Not To Screen, And When? That Is The Breast Cancer Question
During the past few days, news media has inundated the U.S. public with word that for the first time in 20 years, a government task force has changed course in its recommendations for breast cancer screening.On the surface, that doesn't seem like an earth-shattering story. Guidelines are routinely ...
Heart Disease Patients Treated With Their Own Stem Cells
Out of the estimated 1 million people in the U.S. who suffer from chronic, severe angina -- chest pain due to blocked arteries -- about 300,000 cannot be helped by any traditional medical treatment such as angioplasty, bypass surgery or stents. Recently, a nationwide study demonstrated that transplanting ...
Can 'Mental Budgets' Help Consumers Control Their Eating Habits?
Over consumption is a serious issue in the United States. National Institutes of Health statistics show that two-thirds of American adults are overweight, with associated direct economic medicalcosts of $78.5 billion each year. About 70 million Americans are attempting to control their food intake ...
Titanium Dioxide (TiO2) Nanoparticles In Household Products Linked To Cancer In Mice
Titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanoparticles are found in everything from cosmetics to sunscreen to paint and vitamins, and have caused systemic genetic damage in mice, according to a study conducted by researchers at UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. The study appears this week in the ...
Search Engines Might Be Making Us Smarter
Considering the people and things most often googled these days, it maybe surprising to learn that search engines play a much bigger role in our lives than just helping us find pictures of Megan Fox and mildly entertaining videos of would-be wrestlers in their backyards. Specifically, search engines ...
How Is Your State Of Happiness?
"Health is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity" according to the World Health Organization (WHO). The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index™ focuses on this definition to measure well-being -- or happiness ...
Children Of Attentive Parents Smoke Less Pot, Say Psychologists
Psychologists earlier this month confirmed what most parents likely already know about their teenage children. The more they're involved in their kids' lives (Specifically, by knowing where their children are, who they're with and what they're doing), the less likely it is they will engage ...
What Football Fans Can Teach Us About Human Emotion
If you don't think there's anything to learn by observing a bunch of drunk college students while they watch football and yell at the TV, you're missing out on a valuable cultural lesson. By studying the emotional reactions of college football fans to their favorite teams' on-field performances ...
Networking For Freelancers
What do rock climbing, book clubs, and sci fi have in common? The answer is they all help an astrophysicist with job hunting. Read on for why and how!Back on May 1st, 6 months ago, I decided to transition to a pure freelancer lifestyle. At the time, Stephanie P. asked "How do you transition from ...
Reporting As Science
Call it contrarian stubborness, but I believe there remains that print journalism a critical aspect of American society.That said, what's journalism?Matt Bowden, in the October issue of The Atlantic, proposes that we are in a "post-journalistic age," created by the broadcast drive for ratings and ...
Policy Experts Face Off Over Poverty Eradication
Many politicians see government welfare as the best way to address the problem of poverty in society. President Barack Obama, for example, recently promised to halve poverty within ten years, and his Republican opponent, John McCain, similarly vowed to make poverty eradication a top priority of ...
The Western/Eastern Medicine Rant
This was going to be a footnote, but the topic really gets my dander up; and dander is directly proportional to the number of words disgorged. Reflect for a moment on the terms "Western Medicine" and "Eastern Medicine". No matter how you parse your definitions they are racist and derogatory toward ...
And they're on exhibit at the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Splash Zone! Seriously, if you are within... more »
If you haven't watched NOVA's 3-part special on human evolution, you're missing out. It's all online... more »
Recent research done on a plants stem cells revealed an astonishing process that makes plants very... more »
The question was just raised in a previous blog entry about what a research scientist could learn... more »
This is a question to the many readers of science and technology articles and publications. ... more »
