Where is 'sea level' and how far above sea level is a particular place located?  Quite a lot of things may go wrong in bridge building and the inhabitants of the German and the Swiss parts of…

Researchers have managed to measure the internal pressure that enables the herpes virus to infect cells in the human body, a discovery which paves the way for the development of new medicines to…

Just a small post to mention the recent activity in my Greek blog, where with the help of a very kind Greek student we are offering a selection of articles translated in Greek language. Here are the…

1,000 years ago in North America, long before pilgrams set foot in Massachusetts, there was once a large civilization whose city center was ringed with enormous earthen pyramids, vast farmlands, and…

1,000 years ago in North America, long before pilgrams set foot in Massachusetts, there was once a large civilization whose city center was ringed with enormous earthen pyramids, vast farmlands, and…

I can remember a time when I thought of dirt as something that only seemed to change about it was the color. I had noticed it when my family took vacations and even in looking at the soils in my…

Are you on Team Quantum Dots or Team Nanowires when the topic of future nanoscale energy-harvesting technology in solar panels comes up? A trio of researchers used computational chemistry models…

10 percent of the US is left handed and that is a similar ratio to many populations around the world so it would seem to be biological. But a new paper in the journal Heredity has ruled out…

Knocking on wood is a common superstition in Western culture, mostly used to prevent bad luck after talking about good fortune, but sometimes to reverse bad fortune or undo a "jinx." Other cultures…

Because an uninterrupted sequence of fossilized pollen from flowers begins in the Early Cretaceous, approximately 140 million years ago, it is generally assumed that flowering plants first evolved…

Here is a (partial) overview of (some of) the recent academic literature on the subject of 'Humming' Security Humming-based human verification and identification “The experimental results show that…

A recent article discussed the question of causation versus statistical association in cross-sectional epidemiology studies that evaluate the potential for chemicals to cause health effects. …

As an Applied Mathematician, I like to use mathematical modeling and computational techniques to try to better understand how things work in the world around me. One application I have studied over a…

According to Dante, the Styx is not just a river but a vast, deathly swamp filling the entire fifth circle of hell. It sounds a lot like Lake Natron in northern Tanzania, where temperatures can…

According to Dante, the Styx is not just a river but a vast, deathly swamp filling the entire fifth circle of hell. It sounds a lot like Lake Natron in northern Tanzania, where temperatures can…

This is part 2 of my series on Mars, planet of surprises, great to explore, not so great to colonize  We saw so far that Mars is less hospitable than the coldest driest deserts on Earth.…

In Antarctica's Vestfold Hills, Deep Lake has been isolated from the ocean for the last 3,500 years ago, a result of Antarctic continent rising that has left a saltwater ecosystem that remains liquid…

Concerns about the negative effects of mercury on fetal development have led to the US National Research Council warning against eating too much fish during pregnancy, but those guidelines may need…

Disrupted sleep patterns have been linked to autism but the quality of the evidence accumulated to date has often been compromised by small sample size, lack of agreed definitions, and poor…

Fiber-optic sensors running along a 36-km stretch of high-speed commuter railroad lines connecting Hong Kong to mainland China have taken more than 10 million measurements over the past few years, a…