Ice seems solid to the eye, but it is really a material that flows like a viscous liquid. In the polar ice sheets, it flows towards the oceans under its own weight. Knowing how fast the ice flows is of crucial importance to predict future sea level rises, especially if climate change occurs and impacts that.

For a new study, researchers used flow velocities at the surface of the northern Greenland Ice Sheet to create estimates and data from satellite images suggest that the polar ice is softer than scientists believed. 

Because Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), in infants less than a year old, are tragedies without known explanation, scholars have searched for causes beyond stuffed animals in cribs or blaming parents.

SIDS represents up to 80 percent of all sudden unexpected infant deaths with an five in 1,000 live births in the US. The peak incidence occurs between two months and four months of age and is more common in boys. One explanation has been heart disease caused by genetic mutations but a recent study found that is less than 5 percent of cases, much lower than the 20 percent previously estimated.

“Diversity” as a concept has a lexical and political value all its own, with a widespread appeal. The problem with that is, however, that no one actually has the same idea of what diversity actually means. There is some consensus that the concept has, over time, morphed into something that it was not originally intended to be. Denise Green’s 2004 study looks at the University of Michigan’s response to a 1997 affirmative action case, and argues that legal precedents such as this one moved the cursor away from social and racial justice towards a narrower, simplified idea about diversity.

From a young age, children have a nuanced understanding of how free markets work. A new study in Child Development indicates that children as young as five incorporate market concerns—the idea that what you get is in line with what you give or offer—into their decision making, and increasingly do so with age.

Some people think children are innately selfish, they want to get goodies for themselves, while others insist they are more communist, each will do more to help those who can't or won't do enough. By studying how children engage in different types of exchanges, researchers hope to discern the origins of these behaviors, as well as their developmental course.

Cardiac arrest, essentially a heart attack, appears on a lot of coroner reports but it frequently misclassified and exaggerated. A new analysis finds that 40 percent of deaths attributed to cardiac arrest are not sudden or unexpected, and nearly half of the remainder are not arrhythmic--the only situation in which CPR and defibrillators are effective. Which means they should not be considered cardiac arrest. An alarming 13.5 percent were instead overdoses.

Pond scums were an animal’s best friend. 540 million years ago, oxygen was scarce in the atmosphere and ocean, and animals needed to find oxygen to make a livi

Meditation advocates from three schools say a lower ability to cope with the pain of being rejected by others leads to violence, but that people greater levels of mindfulness, a psychological fad where practitioners maintain attention on and awareness of the present moment -- are better able to cope with such pain. 

While preparing for another evening of observation of Jupiter's atmosphere with my faithful 16" dobsonian scope, I found out that the satellite Io will disappear behind the Jovian shadow tonight. This is a quite common phenomenon and not a very spectacular one, but still quite interesting to look forward to during a visual observation - the moon takes some time to fully disappear, so it is fun to follow the event.
This however got me thinking. A fully eclipsed jovian moon should still be able to reflect back some light picked up from the still lit other satellites - so it should not, after all, appear completely dark. Can a calculation be made of the effect ? Of course - and it's not that difficult.

A survey sent to 1,500 pediatricians, most practicing physicians for more than 15 years and nearly all in primary care, found that 74 percent of the responding pediatricians did not approve of spanking and 78 percent thought spanking never or seldom improved children’s behavior.

A federal judge's recent discussion about why glyphosate should not have a warning label in California, despite the efforts of trial lawyers and the environmental groups they pay, not only shows the label would have no scientific validity, it calls into doubt Proposition 65 itself.<