Note: this is the fourth, and last, part of a four-part article (see part I, part II, part III) on the five-sigma criterion for discovery claims in particle physics. If you haven't read the first…

TERC, a gene which regulates the length of the telomere 'caps' on the ends of DNA and helps control the aging process by acting as a cell's internal clock, has been linked to cancer by a new…

If I tell you that adult science literacy has tripled since I was in college, that would seem to be a good thing.  And if I tell you NIH funding has gone up 50% since 2001, that would also be a…

In 1937, Dirac made the bold conjecture that since the big bang, gravity has been weakening. The cold reception that greeted his highly speculative and numerology-based cosmology paper didn't seem to…

It was announced today that systemwide Academic Senate representing the 10 campuses of the University of California system had passed an “open access” policy. The policy will work like this. Before…

Though the left-right culture war (all Republican bad, all Democrat gooooooood) is still raging in a small segment of the overall science population (some bloggers, whatever science journalists…

Kevin Hays, 19, of Renton, Washington, is studying math, in Arts  &  Sciences, and computer science at Washington University in St. Louis - and now he has a new world record in the…

Note: this is the third part of a four-part article on the Five-Sigma criterion in particle physics. See part 1 and part 2 to make more sense of the discussion below.In this third part I want to…

Applying the laws of men to murky facts is almost as hard as determining the laws of nature.   In science we have clear experimental and observational data and tease out the laws of science.…

In my previous article, you learned how to build a hot liquid level indicator for the vision impaired to help them fill cups with hot liquids such as tea or coffee. The 555 test circuit was used to…

It is America's worst kept secret - the government has top secret military installations. But the hype around Area 51 rapidly grew to be about aliens and UFOs. Instead, it was a more typical Cold War…

Females select the 'right' sperm to fertilize their eggs when faced with the risk of being fertilized by wrong sperm from a different species and researchers recently set out to investigate salmon…

I am making the call: despite all the buzz it is currently getting due to crowdsourced funding for lots of projects, by wading into the anti-technology culture war, I am predicting the demise of…

Monitoring slow earthquakes may provide the basis for reliable prediction in areas where slow quakes trigger normal earthquakes. Geoscientists looked at the mechanisms behind slow earthquakes and…

Humanitarian research at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) is geared toward various projects, among them saving millions of children from death and blindness due to Vitamin A…

A 160 million-year-old fossil of an extinct rodent-like creature from China has been identified as Rugosodon eurasiaticus and is helping to explain how multituberculates, the most evolutionarily…

It's not often that I can say I am stunned by a judicial decision but I have been talking about Yucca Mountain since President Obama took office and immediately honored his deal with Sen. Harry Reid…

“taH pagh taHbe’. DaH mu’tlheghvam vIqeInIS.” – the translation of which, as speakers of Klingon will know, is “To be or not to be; that is the question.”  The Klingon Shakespeare Restoration…

Researchers writing in the Canadian Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology suggest that incubating retinal cells with vegetable oils induces biochemical and biophysical changes in the cell membrane,…

12.00 A study released on Monday found a link between induced or augmented labor, that is, the use of Pitocin, and autism. Women whose doctors decided to begin labor by administering Pitocin, an…