Over 2,000 years ago, gold- and silversmiths developed a variety of techniques, including using mercury like a glue to apply thin films of metals to statues and other objects. They developed thin-…

A new study by astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope have discovered columns of cold, dense gas exiting the disk of nearby starburst galaxy NGC 253…

The pharmaceutical treatment of disease has obviously improved a lot in 50 years but that doesn't mean kids like the taste of medicine. Does that mean kids won't take it? Perhaps they won't take it,…

Today I received news of an interesting measurement of angular distributions of the decay products in the rare decay of the B meson to  a K* and a muon pair - one of the specialties of the LHCb…

Scientists using tracking data from Garwood Valley in the McMurdo Dry Valleys region of Antarctica have documented an acceleration in the melt rate of permafrost - ground ice - in a section of…

It would be great to study Mars "on location". You could do as much in a day or two, as our rovers could do in years. But there's a conundrum to face. Humans are host to hundreds of trillions of…

For almost a century, science has been engaged in a quest to study brain waves and learn about mental health and the way we think. It hasn't been easy. The way billions of interconnected neurons…

Regular marijuana use in adolescence may permanently impair brain function, cognition and increase the risk of developing serious psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, according to a recent…

We've talked about it a lot here: bugs are a great protein source, usually for someone else. Starbucks customers, for example, cheered when the company announced it was removing an artificial…

We've talked about it a lot here: bugs are a great protein source, usually for someone else. Starbucks customers, for example, cheered when the company announced it was removing an artificial…

Stem cell gene therapy has been used to treat a fatal genetic brain disease - Sanfilippo, which in human children causes progressive dementia and death - in mice for the first time.  The…

Male guppies must not be very sexy, because they have evolved an extreme way to hold on to a female that interests them, even if that affection is unrequited: claws on their genitals to make it…

Walking helps people in lots of ways but a paper in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine (now JAMA Pediatrics) has a new benefit; adolescent girls who walk to school show a…

Some people are worried that unthinking, uncaring robots will be part of our future.  They are concerned about a Cylon uprising or maybe a Terminator, but that is unlikely to happen any time…

The rate of unnecessary cancer scans for low-risk prostate cancer patients - the kind of defensive medicine that is a large chunk of medical costs in America - plummeted in Sweden in the decade…

What's the diet for a high performance athlete? Despite the cultural pendulum of fad diets swinging back toward fat, high fiber, low-fat foods balanced with a training regimen remains the best way to…

There are valley networks branching across the Martian surface, which makes it reasonable to believe that water once flowed on the Red Planet. Where water might have come from would be another…

On May 27th, 2006 the ground on Java, an Indonesian island, shook with a magnitude 6.3 earthquake. The epicenter was located 25 km southwest of the city of Yogyakarta and initiated at a depth of 12…

My vague libertarian leanings want me to stay out of the marijuana issue, just like I don't interfere in vaginas and just like I think the government should stop micromanaging gold fish and Big Gulps…

Global warming is on hold, at least temporarily, and being five years behind means we have time for a legitimate basic research solution to become viable technology. A classic trash-to-treasure…