Again, Vaccines Do Not Cause Autism
Was Michael Jackson A Pedophile?
Do Green Fireworks Still Go Boom?
Wind Over Water: An Untapped Power Source?
NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has transmitted its first images since... Read >
Just when you thought evolution couldn't get attacked by anyone else, a zoologist... Read >
This is a review of a recent article, cooperation in Defense against a predator... Read >
Thinking of heading down to the Ms. Adrenaline Swimsuit Competition? Not surprising... Read >
In Was Michael Jackson A Pedophile? we dismissed the idea that Michael Jackson... Read >
House of StrawUse six straws to create the classic house shape (a rectangular... Read >
Hitchhiker's Guide To The Milky Way Gets A Cold Dust Map
Astronomers have unveiled a new atlas of the inner regions of the Milky Way - that's our home galaxy, if you're from someplace else - and it's peppered with thousands of previously undiscovered dense knots of cold cosmic dust, the potential birthplaces of new stars. Using observations from the ...
Discovery: New Black Hole HLX-1 Has 500 Solar Masses And 260 Million Times Our Sun's Brightness
Astronomers using ESA’s XMM-Newton X-ray observatory have discovered a black hole they labeled HLX-1 (Hyper-Luminous X-ray source 1), which lies towards the outskirts of the galaxy ESO 243-49, approximately 290 million light-years from Earth and weighs more than 500 solar masses, making it a ...
How Did The Milky Way Survive? Dark Matter Did It, Says Hypothesis
Why did our Milky Way galaxy survive while others failed? Ill-defined, convenient catch-all dark matter gets the credit, according to a new paper. Dark matter is thought to make up 85 per cent of the Universe’s mass and it may also be one of the building blocks of galaxy formation.The ...
SpARCS Seeks Galaxies Half The Age Of The Universe
Researchers have completed the largest ever survey for very distant clusters of galaxies. Named the Spitzer Adaptation of the Red-sequence Cluster Survey, "SpARCS" detects galaxy clusters using deep ground-based optical observations from the CTIO 4m and CFHT 3.6m telescopes, combined with Spitzer ...
Why Didn't The Whole Planet Freeze During Ice Ages? Plants And CO2
When glaciers advanced over much of the planet's surface during the last ice age, what kept Earth from freezing over entirely? Climate scientists are unsure because popular numerical models indicated that over the past 24 million years geological conditions should have caused carbon dioxide ...
New Battery Is Thinner Than A Piece Of Paper - And Can Be Printed Too
A new printable battery that can be produced cost-effectively on a large scale has been developed by a research team led by Prof. Dr. Reinhard Baumann of the Fraunhofer Research Institution for Electronic Nano Systems ENAS in Chemnitz together with colleagues from TU Chemnitz and Menippos GmbH ...
Freshwater Rain Band Continues 300 Year Journey Northward
The rain band near the equator that determines the supply of freshwater to nearly a billion people throughout the tropics and subtropics has been creeping north for more than 300 years, according to research published in Nature Geoscience. If the band continues to migrate at just less than a ...
Hadrosaur Eating Mystery Solved - They Simply Ate Unlike Anything Else
Microscopic analysis of scratches on dinosaur teeth may have helped scientists unravel an ancient riddle of what a major group of dinosaurs - the Hadrosaurs - ate and exactly how they did it.A study led by the University of Leicester has found evidence that the duck-billed dinosaurs called Hadrosaurs ...
Jurassic Bird? Extinct Giant Moa 'Rebuilt' Using Ancient DNA
Welcome back, Moa. Scientists say they have performed the first DNA-based reconstruction of the giant extinct moa bird using prehistoric feathers recovered from caves and rock shelters in New Zealand.The researchers from the University of Adelaide and Landcare Research in New Zealand have identified ...
Ganlea Megacanina - Move Over Ida, Asia Lays Claim To A Human Common Ancestor
Look out, Ida. Hot on the heels of one overhyped mishmash of media hysteria, a new fossil primate from Myanmar/Burma called Ganlea megacanina is causing researchers to speculate that the common ancestor of humans, monkeys and apes evolved from primates in Asia, not Africa, as many researchers ...
Left Inferior Frontal Sulcus Multitasks For Phonetics And Decision-Making
The front portion of the brain that handles tasks like decision-making, the left inferior frontal sulcus, also helps decipher different phonetic sounds, according to new Brown University research. This section of the brain treats different pronunciations of the same speech sound (such as a 'd' ...
Daredevil Lives: Scientists Develop Echolocation In Humans
A team of researchers from the University of Alcalá de Henares (UAH) has shown that human beings can develop echolocation, the system of acoustic signals used by dolphins and bats to explore their surroundings. Producing certain kinds of tongue clicks helps people to identify objects around ...
War On Teeth Whitening Misguided - Orange Juice Is Worse For Your Teeth, Says Study
With the increasing popularity of whitening teeth, and some studies showing negative effects of teeth whitening, researchers at the Eastman Institute for Oral Health at the University of Rochester Medical Center set out to learn if there are negative effects on the tooth from using whitening products ...
Breast Milk Gets Even More Magical
Scientists at Queen Mary, University of London have discovered that an ingredient in human breast milk called pancreatic secretory trypsin inhibitor, or PSTI, protects and repairs the delicate intestines of newborn babies.PSTI is found at its highest levels in colostrum, the milk produced in the ...
Running Sprints Get A Polyunsaturated Fatty Acid Training Boost
Between the 1932 and 2008 Olympic Games, world record times in the men's 100 meter sprint improved by 0.6 seconds, mostly due to improved training techniques and technological advances.Scientists at the Research Institute of Wildlife Ecology in Austria say they can duplicate that improvement with ...
Phthalates Risk Factor for Low Birth Weight in Infants
Worried about your child’s exposure to phthalates, the chemical compounds used as plasticizers in a wide variety of personal care products, children’s toys, and medical devices? Phthalate exposure can begin in the womb and has been associated with negative changes in endocrine function.A ...
Logic as Inquiry
For some thousands of years “logic” was viewed as the “theory of inquiry” – “inquiry into inquiry” if you will. This was almost certainly the case with Plato, definitely the case with Aristotle, and by and large true throughout the history of Western thought right up to the revolution ...
A Science Of Human Language - Part #9
A Science Of Human Language - Part #9This series, which commenced here, is about quistic grammar, a semantic grammar. It is called quistic grammar because it is based on the notion that all ideas can be reduced to simple questions, or the equivalent: simple statements which answer simple questions ...
Failing to Cure Cancer by Playing it Safe?
The biomedical community has become too risk-averse, according to a recent NY Times piece. I agree, although I don't agree with the dramatic presentation (it's not some dirty scientific secret - it's not hard to find scientists, and the leaders of the funding agencies themselves talking about it) ...
Phobophobia - the science of fear
How many of you are afraid of something? Well, it's probably all in your head. Literally.Warrior Goddesses can be afraid tooI am not a fearful person. Growing up I played with Teela and He-Man, She-Ra and G.I. Joe - no plastic prissy domesticated girly dolls for me.I also had the She-Ra with ...
Bar Bets You Can Win (Installment II)
True Math GeniusThis trick will bring a smile to the face of even the most hardened math geek. First, lay matches on a table to form the equation I + II + III = IIII (crossed matches make the plus signs and parallel matches make the equals sign). Challenge your opponent to make this statement true ...
Marie Curie Tops 10 Most Inspirational Female Scientists Poll
L'Oréal and New Scientist today announced the results of a poll revealing the most inspirational female scientists of all time. Nuclear physicist and chemist Marie Curie topped the poll which was created to celebrate 10 years of the L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women In Science program, with around a quarter ...
Digital Imaging Boost Makes Bad Images Clear
On television, police technicians zoom in on a security camera video to read a license plate or capture the face of a hold-up artist but, in real life, enhancing this low-quality video to focus in on important clues hasn't been an easy task. It just got a little easier. Prof. Leonid Yaroslavsky ...
Poken (not Pokémon)
I spent last week in Boston, attending the Open Mobile Alliance meeting. Whenever one goes to meetings, one does the dance of the business card exchange. Because it was my first OMA meeting, I had more of it going on than usual, as I met a lot of people for the first time. So I’ve collected a ...
This is not much of a surprise:In six out of ten countries including Argentina (57%), China (72%)... more »
Although possessing an undeniable bias against consciousness and mood altering drugs, courtesy... more »
Thanks to video we can bathe in the thoughts of the now undead Richard Feynman. This is a brilliant... more »
I'm out of town today, so I'm doing a break from my usual work. Instead, I thought I'd share... more »
Colonial Williamsburg is basically a theme park about colonial days in America, the time in the... more »
