Statistics data analysis is one of those things that experimental physicists learn along the way. It is not a topic usually included in the curriculum studiorum of physics students at Universities:…

Recently I attended a talk by Ronnie de Sousa, a philosopher at The University of Toronto, by the somewhat unusual, almost oxymoronic, title of “Love and Reason” (as opposed to, say, Love or Reason…

Temple Grandin’s “The Autistic Brain: Thinking Across the Spectrum” [1] belongs to a new(ly fashionable but old) way of thinking that supports my own approach, namely that pathologic (psychopathic)…

A few brief days in embryonic life lays out our body's construction plan. The appearance of limbs and vertebrae is orchestrated by a family of 'architect' genes called Hox, each providing precise…

What with all the current talk of GMOs, I would remind folks here that some 20th century methods also raised fears.  A more “traditional” method has been to double the chromosome content of…

2012 saw a drought in the American mid-west.  As a result, withered corn plants didn't suck up all the nitrogen spread on fields.   But 2013 gave Iowa citizens the wettest April in 141…

2012 saw a drought in the American mid-west.  As a result, withered corn plants didn't suck up all the nitrogen spread on fields.   But 2013 gave Iowa citizens the wettest April in 141…

If you've been to a whispering gallery, a quiet, circular space often underneath a dome or vault that captures and amplifies sounds as quiet as a whisper, you have witnessed parabolics in action. The…

Using social media like Twitter, Facebook and others is said to be like drinking from a fire hose. A team of data scientists at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, is…

Visually impaired individuals and people with uncorrected refractive error, those who could benefit from glasses to achieve normal vision but don't wear glasses, have a significantly greater risk of…

Combat troops must minimize the 'human-ness' of their enemies in order to kill them, they can't be effective fighters if they're distracted by feelings of empathy for opponents. But if the opponent…

News (?), Top-Secret (?), Latest revelation (?)Strange, the EU was aware of the NSA (spying) global gathering of electronic data since 2001.  Sorry folks, this is not news.  I wrote about…

Have you heard of volcanoes, earthquakes and British weather? If so, maybe you can blame the North Pole if you don't like any of those things. If you have been asleep for 110 years or never read…

Have you heard of volcanoes, earthquakes and British weather? If so, maybe you can blame the North Pole if you don't like any of those things. If you have been asleep for 110 years or never read…

NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM satellite) flew directly above tropical storm Andrea on Thursday, June 6, 2013 at 0508 UTC (1:08 a.m. EDT). This orbit showed that Andrea had a large…

Spindle-shaped inclusions in 3 billion-year-old rocks are microfossils of plankton probably inhabited the oceans around the globe during that time - but these inclusions in the rocks were not…

"I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics," spoke American physicist, educator and quote machine Richard Feynman — underlining the idea that even leading scientists…

In animals that reproduce by internal fertilization, as humans do, the penis is invaluable, from an evolutionary point of view.  Yet birds have evolved to not need them. Developmentally…

I am used to odd looks when I say I'm flying a satellite to convert the ionosphere to music.  The field of art/science hybrids is hard to assess.  What's your call on putting a TARDIS in…

A Tool For Etymologists Advances in science frequently generate new words and phrases.  Accordingly, a good source of etymological information can often help pin down the era in which a new…