Gravity: From Cave-men To Newton
ET: Anybody Home?
By Gerhard Adam
Just One Baby
By Josh Witten
Is Racism Due To Perceptual Illusions?
Having been a child of the 60s I was naturally inspired by what was euphemistically... Read >
When we experience disasters like the earthquake in Haiti January 2010, we... Read >
A study of the phenomenon known as loss aversion in two patients with lesions... Read >
A new report in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention suggests that... Read >
Religion is a hotly debated topic both among scholars and the general... Read >
Using graphene, Swedish and American researchers say they have succeeded in... Read >
How Can Ice Work Like A Horse?
How Can Ice Work Like A Horse?In this short series of articles about coal, engines and energy I am trying to show something of the history behind our current knowledge of heat, energy and thermodynamics. As discoveries were made about the nature of heat, improvements were made in the ...
The Real History Of Gravity
It was Aristarchus of Samos (310BC -230 BC), who ironically lived after Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC), who was the first person in recorded history to come up with the idea of a heliocentric system, centuries before the Polish canon, physician and astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) wrote ...
Dirty Coal And Boring Science
Dirty Coal And Boring ScienceThere was a time when, through the proliferation of steam power, coal extraction in vast quantities became economically viable. Throughout the U.K. coal was burned to make steam for locomotives, factories and ships. It was the domestic fuel of choice. ...
Galactic Survey Helps Explain Evolution Of Hubble Sequence
For the first time, a team of astronomers has completed a demographic census of galaxy types at two different points in the Universe's history — in effect, creating two Hubble sequences — that help explain how galaxies form. The survey of 116 local galaxies and 148 distant galaxies indicates ...
Alaskan Glacial Melt Rate Overestimated, New Study Suggests
Researchers analyzing recent data from the SPOT 5 and ASTER satellites say that previous studies have largely overestimated mass loss from Alaskan glaciers over the past 40 years. Writing in a recent issue of Nature Geoscience, the team suggests that mass loss in these glaciers contributed 0.12 ...
The Price Of Arctic Ice
The Price Of Arctic IcePutting an economic value on the loss of the Arctic's climate regulating abilitiesA report by the Pew Environment Group entitled An Initial Estimate of the Cost of Lost Climate Regulation Services Due to Changes in the Arctic Cryosphere is an attempt by scientists to put ...
The Age Of Stupid -- Movie Review
"The Age of Stupid," a 2009 docudrama set in 2055, asks why didn't we save Earth when we had the chance. "Stupid" was first conceived by Director Franny Armstrong as a documentary integrating themes of excessive consumption, war and climate change. Armstrong began developing the idea in 2002 and ...
Arctic Melt 2010 Is Faster Than Models Predicted
Arctic Melt 2010 Is Faster Than Models PredictedThe National Snow And Ice Data Center - NSISC - reports:Despite cool temperatures over most of the Arctic Ocean in January, Arctic sea ice extent continued to track below normal. By the end of January, ice extent dropped below the extent observed ...
Earlier Springs May Throw Nature Out Of Step
A collaborative study involving scientists from 12 UK research institutions, universities and conservation organizations suggests that the trend towards earlier UK springs and summers has been accelerating. The study, published recently in Global Change Biology, is the most comprehensive and rigorous ...
Humboldt Squid Are Still Not Giant Squid
Oh criminy, are we still confused? Didn't we go over this like a zillion times? Wasn't Deep-Sea News' excellent primer on how Humboldt Squid are Not The Same Thing as Giant Squid clear enough?Sigh. Just let a few fishermen catch a few hundred Humboldt squid, and suddenly the headlines are blaring ...
Transcriptional Profiling Of Plasmodium Falciparum May Lead To Malaria Vaccine
Using transcriptional profiling, researchers at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University have uncovered previously unknown gene expression patterns in malaria. The discovery could lead to the development of more potent drugs or a vaccine for malaria, which is transmitted to humans by infected ...
Sugar Molecule Plays Important Role In Cell Division
Johns Hopkins scientists have discovered that common but hard-to-see sugar switches play an important role in cell division. Because these previously unrecognized sugar switches are so abundant and potential targets of manipulation by drugs, the discovery of their role has implications for new ...
Broken Hearts: Not Just Fodder For Songwriters
If you feel like you have an achy breaky heart, you may not be imagining things. "Broken hearts" are indeed real, although in the medical community they go by the much less lyrical name of stress (tako-tsubo) cardiomyopathy.A recent article in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology described ...
Bullet-Shaped Virus Could Help Treat Cancer
Vesicular stomatitis virus, or VSV, has shown the potential to serve as an anti-cancer agent, exercising high selectivity in killing cancer cells while sparing healthy cells, and as a potent vaccine against HIV. But in order for the necessary genetic modifications to occur, scientists must have ...
Most Smokers Quit 'Cold Turkey', Researchers Say
Despite the over-promotion of nicotine replacement therapies by drug companies and anti-tobacco activists, the most successful method used by ex-smokers is unassisted cessation, according to a new policy forum in PLoS Medicine. In the article, researchers from the School of Public Health at the ...
Marijuana Won't Reverse Alzheimer's, Study Claims
A new study published in Current Alzheimer Research claims that marijuana doesn't temper or reverse the effects of Alzheimer's disease and may even cause harm. The findings could lower expectations about the benefits of medical marijuana in combating various cognitive diseases and help redirect ...
How To Model A Smoking Gun
How To Model A Smoking GunConspiracy theorists just love to get hold of a piece of new information and claim that it is the 'smoking gun' that 'conclusively proves' their pet theory. The psychology behind this mode of argument is so subtle that a 'smoking gun' proponent may not just ...
Stress Sensitivity Isn't Always Bad For Children
Conventional wisdom says that children who are especially sensitive to stress are more vulnerable to adversity and have more behavior and health problems than their peers. But a new study in the journal Child Development suggests that highly sensitive children are also more likely to do well when ...
Consumers Value Expert Opinion When It Comes To Health
According to a study of how people evaluate and act on online health advice, information written by a doctor is considered more credible when it appears on a Web site than on a blog or a homepage. The findings, published in the Journal Communication Research, highlight the relative importance of ...
An Evolutionary Role For Same-Sex Attraction?
From an evolutionary perspective, same sex attraction doesn't make much sense. But a pair of psychologists writing in Psychological Science say the "kin selection hypothesis" may explain why the trait has persisted for eons without conferring any discernible reproductive advantage.The new study ...
Da Vinci Resume Advice
Marc Cenedella has excavated an old resume of da Vinci, the very definition of 'renaissance man' and 'genius'. At the time, da Vinci was applying to work for the Duke of Milan.Wired UK looks at his resume (Was Da Vinci the right man for the job?) and (being Wired) come to exactly the ...
Can Biotech Companies Patent Your Genes?
The trial over gene patents, Association for Molecular Pathology, et al. v. U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, et al., is beginning. Discover summarizes the case:When Lisbeth Ceriani, a 43-year-old Massachusetts woman, was diagnosed with breast cancer last year, her doctors recommended that she ...
Americans Aren't Worried About Climate Change...But Want To Stop It?
Researchers from Yale and George Mason Universities say that, despite a lack of concern over climate change, the American public is in favor of policies aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions and developing cleaner forms of energy. The survey released today found that Americans are in favor ...
Computational Science In 2020
While not really a law in the same sense as Newton's laws or the laws of thermodynamics, Moore's "law" (which states that the density at which transistors can be packed on integrated circuits with the technology existing at the time doubles approximately every two years) has held for the past forty ...
Sustainable Water - A Lesson From IndiaAnupam Mishra travels across water-challenged India studying... more »
Let's be honest, both poles of the American political spectrum fear the same thing about each other... more »
Walter Fontana, a Professor of Systems Biology at Harvard, reflects on models in biology:Models... more »
I decided to follow the lead of Alex, the Daytime Astronomer and rewrite my profile. I figured... more »
