Sometimes you just have to believe. Acupuncture has proven to be effective, though it isn't actually being done. When it comes to hot flashes due to breast cancer treatment, even skin pricks used to…

Physics can give pointers for energy saving and an can provide materials scientists with tips for the development of high-temperature superconductors.  Nearly two percent of the electrical…

Cranky old people might think that mellow crooning is less damaging to the voice than beatboxing, with its harsh, high-energy percussive sounds. Not so, according to a paper in the Journal of Voice…

The assumption has long been that if mercury is increasing in fish in the North American and European Arctic, the same is true of fish elsewhere in the Arctic. Not so, according to conservation…

A new paper studied if the excitability of the motor cortex correlates with working memory performance – and results were positive.  By measuring the motor excitability, conclusions can be…

In every country, centralized government is funded by mandatory public taxation and that means a layer of bureaucracy to go after tax evaders. It can obviously be good for the community - people get…

In April, a story was promoted by mainstream Scare Journalists that imported rice had high levels of lead - I am linking to Time but it was everywhere.  It was based on a poster at a conference…

If you are an avid gamer who can't be bothered with cooking Christmas dinner, or a hipster who wants to cynically consume packaged food while watching bad movies, there is a good news. The Christmas…

There are no chestnuts roasting on an open fire this Christmas if you live in San Francisco, But, really, if you cared about science, freedom or tolerance you moved long ago so you don't mind. You…

There are no chestnuts roasting on an open fire this Christmas if you live in San Francisco, But, really, if you cared about science, freedom or tolerance you moved long ago so you don't mind. You…

Another year, another card inspired by what I am thinking about in physics. Inside the card it reads... Time is not space, space is not time. Space-time is a marriage, complex and tense. In an…

The XVIth international chess tournament "Citta' di Padova" ended last Sunday with the victory of GM Kiril Georgiev, who got 7 points out of 9 games. The tournament saw the participation of 63…

As I’ve mentioned on other occasions, my most recent effort in philosophy of science actually concerns what my collaborator Maarten Boudry and I call the philosophy of pseudoscience. During a recent…

I met George Zweig at a conference in Crete last Summer. He impressed me with the multidisciplinarity of his interests and his quite entertaining career. He has a degree in mathematics, and did quite…

Since the discovery of the charm quark in 1974, physicists have postulated a rare process in which a charm particle spontaneously changes into its antiparticle. Evidence for this behavior was…

Like computers, our brains work on inductance. A switch is open or closed, a signal is passed. Brains follow rules, like computers.  But if the brain is like a computer, why do brains make…

Women's perceptions of what is considered normal and desirable female genitalia may be influenced by exposure to modified images, according to psychologists writing in BJOG: An International Journal…

Determining how proteins misfold to create the tissue-damaging structures that lead to type 2 diabetes is complicated. These amyloid fibrils are also implicated in neurodegenerative conditions such…

Species living together are not forced to evolve differently to avoid competing with each other, a notion that that has been debated since the early days of natural selection. By focusing on…

Solar variation has not strongly influenced climate change, according to a paper which seeks to  overturn a widely held scientific view that lengthy periods of warm and cold weather in the past…