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…

Food waste is a big problem, particularly in the developing world, but also in the rich world.   I have seen quite a bit written recently about how one of the best ways to improve the…

Appalachian-Americans rejoice, archaeologists have added a new piece to your heritage puzzle. The remains of the earliest European fort in the interior of (what is now) the United States have been…

Concerned parents have been worried about the potential impact of exposure to low levels of mercury on the developing brain, such as when pregnant women consume fish, and that has led to claims that…

Synthetic materials made from organic polymers, like polyurethane foams, usually burn very well due to their high carbon content. They not only burn easily; depending on their chemical…

The main active constituent of cannabis - tetrahydrocannabinol or THC - has not shown to be effective in slowing the course of progressive multiple sclerosis (MS). The CUPID (Cannabinoid Use in…

Of the estimated 20,000 genes humans have, only a fraction are turned on at any given time. It depends on the cell's needs, which can change by the minute or hour. Determining what those genes are…

Adineta vaga, the delloid rotifer, abandoned sex yet still produced more than 460 species over evolutionary time. Rather than the standard way of using sexual reproduction to weed out harmful…

After reading another article by Alex Berezow ["The Arrogance of a Well-Fed Society"] insisting that there is absolutely no problem with human population growth, I couldn't help but be struck by the…

Does buying a Snickers bar instead of a Milky Way improve a baseball team's chance to win?  You can't prove it doesn't - and for that reason the most superstitious baseball fans have little…

A family of molecules called TAML activators provide an environmentally friendly method for breaking down toxic compounds that contaminate water, including endocrine disruptors. Endocrine disrupters…

Shrinking sea ice cover in the North Atlantic - baby harp seals impacted most. A new paper says satellite images have allowed researchers to gauge the relative roles that genetic, environmental and…

Food waste is a big problem in the rich world, and even more so in the developing world.  Recently, much has been written suggesting that one of the best ways to improve the sustainability…

Resveratrol, a natural antioxidant compound found in red grapes and other plants, has received widespread attention for being a possible anti-aging compound and is now widely available as a dietary…

When we want to blow our minds with the sheer vastness of nature, we often turn to astronomy. In fact, we use the word astronomical to mean really a whole lot. But today, I'd like to make a case…

Since 1935, when Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger created his famous thought experiment about a cat that was both alive and dead, physicists have tried to create large scale systems to test how…

The visual cortex is a fantastical portion of the brain, and one which is enlarged in our species to the extent that we can use our eyes to make sense of the world around us in amazing detail. We…

A new paper in Biology Letters raises more questions about the benefits of vitamins as a health supplement. High doses of dietary antioxidants such as vitamins are claimed to slow the process of…

The genetic sequence of the X chromosome, the female counterpart to the male-associated Y chromosome, reveals that large portions of the X have evolved to play a specialized role in sperm production…