I liken cognition to a hill-climbing search on the landscape of theories/models/maps that explain/predict reality.  It’s easy to get stuck on peaks of local maximality.  Injecting…

The DZERO collaboration  published a few days ago the results of their search for multi-b-quark signatures of Supersymmetry in a large dataset of proton-antiproton collisions at 1.96 TeV. The…

I preach there are all kinds of truth, your truth and somebody else's. But behind all of them there is only one truth and that is that there's no truth. - Flannery O'Connor Stories and Memes The…

I preach there are all kinds of truth, your truth and somebody else's. But behind all of them there is only one truth and that is that there's no truth. - Flannery O'Connor Stories and Memes The…

This story about the "chubby" galaxy cluster Abell 1689 and dark matter made me laugh out loud. Here's the title: Chubby Galaxy Cluster Suggests Dark Energy Was Stronger Long Ago Then, later on in…

'Agouti' is a family of genes previously identified in humans and the first two members are responsible for skin and hair color. Identified by Vanderbilt scientists, AgRP2 the newest member of…

Once I heard a remark from a would be father in most prosperous nation in the eastern hemisphere a leader in car industry, that "We don’t see smile on face of our children though they have…

Metabolism = anabolism-catabolism In plant science metabolism is sum total of anabolic processes i.e. photosynthesis which make complex substances from simple molecules to catabolism i.e. respiration…

When my husband and I first realized in 1994 that we were entering the world of special needs parenting, there were very few books as guidelines. When autism entered our vocabulary, the first thing I…

What is science? Science is application of the scientific method to problems or questions, and then submitting the story to the scrutiny of others. It’s simple. It’s elegant. It’s self-correcting.It…

The arxiv is featuring a new paper by Darien Wood, member and spokesperson of the DZERO experiment and a distinguished physicist with lots of experience in hadron collider physics. The paper is…

Blogging really only became a communications whirlwind when President George W. Bush was in the White House so, for the most part, science blogger outrage focused on his actions as President, and…

From Neuroanthropology blog Review article Tunnel vision Pinker, Steven. 2002. The blank slate: the modern denial of human nature. London: Penguin. 509 pp. The gap between sociocultural…

The dividing line partitioning protestant congregations which sponsor these receiving textbook classification as Cult organizations is narrow and drawn with a palsy: missing, or at least not…

Let's be honest; life began on land.  I know, I know, that is blasphemy and Neil Shubin will stand on high and strike me down with my inner fish for saying such a thing, but while life began in…

Conservation scientists from London's Natural History Museum (NHM) are traveling to Paraguay to record biodiversity.   The problem?  The Dry Chaco region they want to visit is home to the…

Having read the biography of Oliver Heaviside, I remain aware that I am not really au fait with inductance as I am with resistance and capacitance.  Searching without much success for a textbook…

A Disclaimer: I am not spreading any social gospel of minimalism or primitivism; nor am I making any moral statement about the merit of culture with my blog's title. Tis a dramatic catch phrase…

"Far from being conservative, the Republican stance on global warming shows a stunning appetite for risk", writes Bracken Hendricks in the Washington Post.    First, of course, is the error…

Continuing my series on the history of batteries, we now more on to batteries with nickel-based electrodes. 1899 saw the development of the nickel-cadmium battery by Waldemar Jungner. He also…