Substance abuse doesn’t sit in a neat little package, tied up with a bow, waiting for treatment. Instead, imagine this little box...with octopus tentacles coming out of it. That’s addiction: it may…

Everybody seems to be talking about the Kardashian index (call it K) these days. It is a rather useless number that you compute as a ratio between the number of twitter followers you have and the…

One day while shopping in your local supermarket in the next few years it's likely you'll run across a loaf of Arnold brand 100% Whole Wheat Bread with a label saying something like “Produced with…

This morning at the ICNFP 2014 conference in Kolympari (Crete) the floor was taken by Abdelhak Djouadi, who gave a very nice overview of the theoretical implications of the Higgs boson discovery,…

Charles Hard Townes (AP Photo) Charles Townes has a lot going for him; he just saw his 99th birthday and 500 people showed up to cheer for him. He has a Nobel prize and a younger wife - Frances…

Why do addicts seek their drug? Why can’t they stop? The 21st century view is that an addict’s brain becomes literally hardwired to crave the drug. It’s called “incentive-sensitization” – the theory…

If someone can use Kickstarter to raise $50,000 for making potato salad, perhaps, I can raise at least $2500 to pay publication fees on three papers.  It is a little known fact that…

In 2015, damage after heart attacks will become a thing of the past. In the UK alone, over 100,000 people die from heart attacks each year, but in many cases people who are successfully treated still…

Activists unable to get the U.S.federal government to enact any law regarding labeling of genetically modified foods have successfully pushed for their own versions in a handful of states. But the…

Science Magazine used Transwomen as props on a cover that had nothing to do with the contents. All it did was stigmatize a marginalized group of people and probably reinforce bias among members of a…

Earlier this week Science Magazine used the neck down image of a group of  transgender women walking in the streets of Jakarta, Indonesia to highlight HIV/AIDS research.    There is…

We know the effects of childhood traumas like abuse and neglect on later substance abuse. But what impact does second hand trauma have? A study published in the August issue of the journal Addiction…

As a consumer of science who is not a scientist how can you know if a theory is legitimate or simply crakcpottery.  Here are some easy to understand signs that an alternative theory is…

Last Friday a group of researchers announced their findings ahead of their report on the nutrition of organically produced food to be published in the British Journal of Nutrition. The study is…

At a secret enclave in the San Francisco metropolitan area, synthetic biologists and DIYBio tinkerers have been hacking nature up to fix the one thing about the vegan diet that would be difficult for…

A recent article by Nury Vittachi, Scientists discover that atheists might not exist, and that’s not a joke, received rather a lot of comments.  Among these were a few about the place of women…

I guess every profession has its own kind of personalized spam. Here is a couple of recent samples from my own: From a Fermilab address: "According to the TRAIN database training for course FN000508…

In America, radical environmental groups get something of a cultural free pass.  It's understandable, because America is a two-party country. Due to that, otherwise scientifically literate…

Years ago, when science media was generally in decline, both financially and content-wise, I held up Popular Science as the poster child for how to be successful: Appeal to your market and stay out…

"Going Deep" With David Rees premieres tonight on National Geographic Channel and if you have little time to decide whether or not to watch it, you are in luck because I can be brief - it's a good…