Did you know about the anime Squid Girl? Apparently it came in third in the 2010 "Net Buzzword Awards," a competition that was heretofore unknown to me. Shinryaku! Ika Musume earned the Bronze Prize…

"So string theory is certainly among the directions that deserve more investigation. But should it continue to be regarded as the dominant paradigm of theoretical physics ? Should most of the…

In light of today's *way* over-hyped reporting of "new alien life" discovered by NASA-funded research (GFAJ-1, the arsenic microbe), I thought this song would be appropriate. By the way, find out the…

Ah, the good old days, where everyone in the neighborhood had kids named John and Mary (or Juan and Maria, or Jean and Marie, etc). But all of the warm fuzzy melting pot of same-name-ness started to…

I was quite saddened today to hear the bad news that Uli Baur passed away prematurely yesterday. Uli was a professor of physics at the University at Buffalo, and his research interests focused on…

I was 16 or so when my dad listened to me tell him about the dream I had the night before. I laughed it off and thought my dreams were for entertainment purposes only. Then he suggested that the next…

Yesterday I mentioned David Cameron's plan to introduce a national happiness index in the UK. This is not a new idea, and surveys have been going on for decades, and in 2003 a study looked at some of…

MakeZine shows (not just tells, but shows) that 2 square meters of sunlight, focused, will melt anything on Earth and NASA points out that The Sun Steals Comets from Other Stars So I suggest the…

"I learned the stopping-rule principle from Professor Barnard in conversation in the summer of 1952. Frankly, I then thought it a scandal that anyone in the profession could advance an idea so…

Effect of embedding Fe3O4 nanoparticles in silica spheres on the optical transmission properties of three-dimensional magnetic photonic crystals Magnetic and optical properties of three-dimensional…

I am very happy to report here (after having done the same on my Greek blog first, for a change) that the "Max Planck" medal for 2011 has been assigned to Giorgio Parisi, a distinguished Italian…

Why scientists should blog is not a new topic to Science 2.0.   In a way, I think we pioneered science blogging(1) because, prior to us, the only science bloggers with any real audience mostly…

The cohort: “The Phase III clinical trial followed 2,499 HIV-negative men and transgender women (who had once been men) who have sex with men. The individuals, aged 18 to 67, lived in cities in…

Let's have some fun and pick apart a paper (try saying "pick apart a paper" 10 times fast!) The question is, did the 9/11 terrorist attacks impact the character of Americans?  I mean that…

Colin Palmer, an engineer engaged in research on the aerodynamics of pterosaurs at the University of Bristol, has shown that the creatures were predominantly adapted to slow speed flight; too slow…

On the eve of Thanksgiving, we tend to start our annual pondering about how we might give more to our friends and family, and maybe even to the world. Citizen scientists--whether they consciously…

OK, I've had just about enough of the stupid statistics being put out by the FDA regarding full body scanners at airports. I'm not sure why everyone is behaving as if such a scan is a singular event…

Earlier this month the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced that $8 million worth of new grant money has been awarded to educational and non-profit institutions across the…

Beginning in 1988, and until a Republican Congress approved mandates and subsidies for biofuels in 2005 (at which point every Democrat and environmental activist irrationality extolling ethanol must…

In another thread on Science 2.0 we got onto the nature of existence and what we can say for certain about the universe (if anything).  Given that physics and math seem so intimately linked in…