C/2012 S1, Comet ISON, is intriguing because it has never approached the sun before and that is scientifically terrific.  Comet ISON began in the Oort cloud almost a light year away and has…

Rip currents claim more lives in Australia on average each year than bushfires, floods, cyclones and sharks combined - but don't get too nervous, rip currents only cause about 21 confirmed human…

Can you control noisemaking chaos? Brazilian planners hope so. They'd rather not have the ear-splitting vuvuzela which took over the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. Tens of thousands of those…

There has been a snowfall decrease in Canada's subarctic regions and that has led to worrisome desiccation of the regions' lakes - this has happened in the past also, of course, but it was less…

Will fish stop swimming due to global warming? It's not the craziest mainstream media headline you are likely to read, but researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at…

A $500  three-dimensional  "nano-camera" that can operate at the speed of light has been developed by researchers in the MIT Media Lab and was presented at Siggraph Asia in Hong Kong. It…

If pharmaceutical companies are unethical, scientists are just tinkerers and doctors are educated by marketing, why would parents sign up their kids for medical research? Those concepts are…

I’m getting a little tired of writing about the relationship between science and philosophy when it comes to ethics, as I’ve made my views abundantly clear on this blog and elsewhere. Nonetheless,…

When a star goes supernova, it shines brightly for a few weeks or months before fading away. Yet the material blasted outward from the explosion glows hundreds or thousands of years later, leaving a…

While driving to my doctor's office to get some persistent Toxicodendron diversilobum (that's poison oak) looked at, I listened to NPR. Just as you would expect of me, my radio stations will all have…

Google money magic can only take you so far with the federal government.  23andMe, the highest profile genetic testing company, co-founded by Anne Wojcicki, wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin…

Methane has 30 times the warming effect of carbon dioxide but lacks the press awareness of its greenhouse gas cousin.  And a new study in Nature Geoscience has found that the seafloor off the…

Can you artificially strengthen a marital bond?  Scientists at the Bonn University Medical Center found that if oxytocin is administered to men and if they are shown pictures of their partner,…

Using chest pain characteristics (CPCs) specific to women in the early diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction (AMI, heart attack) in the emergency department does not seem to be supported by the…

Retroviruses are important pathogens capable of crossing species barriers to infect new hosts, but knowledge of their evolutionary history is limited. By mapping endogenous retroviruses (ERVs),…

Some older chemistry sets included a conductivity tester to demonstrate the conductivity of materials and liquids. If you wish to include Snap Circuits in your Science Play and Research Kit you can…

Archaeologists working in Nepal have uncovered evidence of a structure at the birthplace of the Buddha dating to the sixth century B.C., the first archaeological material linking the life of the…

Playing violent video games not only increases aggression, it also leads to less self-control and more cheating, according to  a paper in Social Psychological and Personality Science. The…

Caitlin Shetterly’s long feature, “The Bad Seed: The Health Risks of Genetically Modified Corn,” in Elle—a magazine with more than 1.1 million monthly readers—was particularly appalling. http://www.…

Caitlin Shetterly’s long feature, “The Bad Seed: The Health Risks of Genetically Modified Corn,” in Elle—a magazine with more than 1.1 million monthly readers—was particularly appalling. http://www.…