Check out the Super Star Edition at Mauka to Makai, which, this month, is almost as exciting as watching Shaun White and Apolo Ohno. There are a bunch of posts commemorating Darwin's birthday, which…

Since we're frequently quoting, linking to, and commenting on someone else's copyrighted stuff, those of us who blog should have a strong interest in our copyright rights. Ars Technica has a piece…

During a meeting of Plant tissue culture association wonderful explanations about the genomes of rice strctural and functional genomics are presented. At the same time a a dozen or more presentations…

The Symphony of Science is a project inspired by the work of Carl Sagan and has become well-known for producing short videos setting to music the wise words of scientists. The above video is the 4th…

I first spotted this as a small advert on Nature. "Help Reduce the Placebo Effect in Clinical Drug Trials" I smiled cynically and just had to check it out - and I was right! "Placebo responses in as…

I recently wrote about research on people's beliefs using fMRI technology to see how different parts of the brain were activated. Near the end of their paper, the researchers commented that such…

A Mailman School of Public Health study examining the effects of institutional discrimination on the psychiatric health of lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) individuals found an increase in psychiatric…

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Headlines The problem with attracting readers to scientificblogging.com with attention-grabbing headlines is that some people don't realise that perhaps only…

This New Scientist article reminds me of a project I worked on about ten years ago. The article talks about analyzing mobile-phone location data to establish patterns of how the users move around.…

There has been much discussion lately about the ignorance of matters scientific among the public.  With this is mind, here are some thoughts from Blighty. I have just been speaking to my…

An impressive insight from someone who never tried to get qPCR to work: Thus it is said:The path into the light seems darkthe path forward seems to go backthe direct path seems longtrue power seems…

The Royal Mail has launched a Special issue commemorating the 350th Anniversary of The Royal Society. Ten specially-commissioned stamps have been issued showing some of the most famous scientist in…

An Argument For Cross-Disciplinary Studies Lack of experience diminishes our power of taking a comprehensive view of the admitted facts. Hence those who dwell in intimate association with nature and…

Jack of Kent updated his blog at the weekend to highlight one aspect of the BCA v Singh case: what is evidence? Both science and law rely on evidence and yet they use the same word in subtly…

“GM food only way to feed starving people: US scientist Sun, Feb 28 09:30 PM “Kochi, Feb 28 (PTI) The ''spat'' over GM vegetables on ethical grounds was meaningless while millions of people are…

Let me also say what I don't mean by final, underlying, laws of physics. I don't mean that other branches of physics are in danger of being replaced by some ultimate version of elementary particle…

Cannot resist posting the following paperclip, grabbed from a news site this afternoon (it's a Sunday, a critical detail you should not overlook; and this is an Italian newspaper, as should be…

In light of some comments below, and what appears to be an inability to follow a simple link, I accept it is time to rewrite this blog post as one seamless narrative. Thanks to those comments that…

This American Life from Chicago Public Radio has an interesting story about the history of psychiatry with regards to homosexuality: why homosexuality used to be considered a mental illness, and why…

Why did the Babylonians and the Greeks approach astronomy so differently? In my last post I quoted Toulmin and Goodfield from their history of dynamics and astronomy, The Fabric of the Heavens, where…