The first fax machine had no value. It couldn't send a fax to anyone. It was, from a value perspective, useless.

The second fax machine added value to the first because it now had something which could receive faxes. The third added value to the first two and received value from them in the network as well. As each fax machine came into existence, the value it added was nonlinear. The more fax machines that existed, the more value each of them had.

Many things in life are like that.

For all that Darwin did, Evolution as yet has no explanation for puzzling animal behavior.

Social insects provide some of the most fascinating examples of altruism in the natural world, with sterile workers sacrificing their own reproduction for the greater good of the colony.

That isn't the case with all insects - in some cases, there is a very real battle of the sexes going on, even in their larvae.

It's been generally believed that sterile 'soldier' larvae act in positive ways, by protecting them from attack by other species of parasitoids.

You may have read about the strange double asteroids dancing in space but putting together the pictures is a perfect example of science collaboration.

Prior to 2000, Antiope was just another asteroid. Then the 10-meter Keck II telescope in Hawaii discovered it was a doublet but not much else was known.

Two years ago, improved images from the European Southern Observatory's 8-meter Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile and Keck II determined an approximate orbit of the asteroids - but information was still sparse.

Enter crowdsourcing.

Common sense says businesses, driven by profits, will go where they can make the most by paying the least.

Three researchers, Dr Holger Görg from GEP (the Globalisation and Economic Policy Centre, University of Nottingham ) and Professor Hassan Molana and Dr Catia Montagna from the University of Dundee, disagree.

After analyzing data from 18 countries over a 14 year period, the team found that the countries which attracted the highest levels of foreign investment were the ones with higher taxes and higher public social expenditure as a proportion of GDP.

Dr Görg, Associate Professor and Reader in Economics at GEP, said:

"The results may be startling and appear to be counterintuitive.

"Most economists have always argued that globalisation leads to a ‘race-to-th

As an electromagnetics guy I stay in touch with a lot of what is happening in that segment of physics by subscribing to plain, ol' email lists. People who need info just fire off a question to the group and someone helps.

Occasionally recruiters spam the place because, you know, all of their recruiting emails are terribly important to the whole planet. When I got my email this morning, I saw this: