Mariano Crociata: a name, a promise. The general secretary of CEI (the Italian Episcopal Conference) secures a spot in the front page of Italian newspapers today by declaring that pharmacists in…

There are myriad reasons why pharmaceutical treatments are ineffective in certain people, but the first suspect is typically not the patient him- or herself. An article published in the November 1…

In the grand tradition of plotting things to make them interesting, we have (from the excellent webtoon Indexed), Pancakes from space: Ironically, NASA didn't invent tang, teflon or ziplock, though…

Terry Zink, a spam-fighter at Microsoft, recently blogged about remembering passwords. His problem, a problem most of us share, is how to strike a balance between using distinct passwords for…

Gasification: INTRODUCTION Biomass is one of the main available source of renewable energy. Its thermochemical upgrading can be performed in gasification (in the presence of air, O2, steam) or in…

In 2002, fossil fuels supplied 86 percent of the energy consumed in the United States. We also imported over half of the petroleum we used and we project that our dependency will continue to grow.…

A fine question! As is so often the case in science, the answer is both yes and no, depending on what kind of squid you are. Squid come in two metaphorical flavors: Myopsida and Oegopsida. They are…

You read right his "mad" idea is simply that electromagnetic fields effect the formation and evolution of cyclones.  What they proposed and measured in the paper, "Electromagnetic fields…

If you lived in 1844 and were a follower of American Baptist preacher William Miller, today would forever be marked as "The Great Disappointment." The world was expected to come to an end on this…

Vegetable oil can be obtained from more than 300 different plant species. Oil is contained mainly in fruits and seeds, yet still other origins exist. The highest oil yields can be obtained from tree…

Key economic characteristics that distinguish industrial biofuel from fossil fuel conversion systems are their general cost structures, scale economies, degree and type of subsidies, foreign exchange…

Biofuel use in the transport sector Because transport fuels are almost exclusively petroleum derived, the rapid real price increases for oil in the 1970s left the transport sector in most oil-…

A friend told me this funny anecdote about the construction of a part of the inner tracker of the CDF detector called "ISL", the so-called "intermediate silicon layers" which were constructed in…

An article "Why Extremist Views Dominate" suggested that such views are expressed more willingly when people believe they hold a majority opinion.  In the study the point was that students that…

I am not the first to point out PhD snoobery.  This is an account from 1903 which appeared in the Harvard Monthly. Quote: Some years ago, we had at our Harvard Graduate School a very brilliant…

Hey, my boss is in the news! Kinda sorta, if you count tiny local papers you've never heard of. And why not--especially when they run articles about people you know? Together with the Noyo Harbor…

A spatially resolved biomass burning data set, and related emissions of SO2 and aerosol chemical constituents was constructed for India, for 1996–1997 and extrapolated to the INDOEX period (1998–1999…

Biomass consumption 5.1. Biofuels Rural and urban biofuel consumption were estimated using respective per capita consumption at a district level, and results aggregated at the state and national…

The plants collected and reported from different tribal and rural areas of Rajasthan. Species namely Azadirachta indica, Tinospora cordifolia, Phyllanthes emblica are used in diabeties. Boerhaavia…

Collection of important medicinal plants from different regions of Rajasthan. Introduction– Rajasthan has a large population of about 5, 64, 73, 122 crore. Around 80 percent live in villages which…