And so here it is, the first public Landsat 8 image. The geographical honours goes to Wyoming and Colorado and the area where the Great Plains meets the Rocky Mountains in USA. I wrote about the…

From the perspective of one theoretical particle physicist Planck found far from "nothing". The ESA's Planck probe largely corroborates the findings of NASA's WMAP probe, but it leaves theoretical…

Over 200 million years ago, a mass extinction wiped out an estimated 76 percent of marine and terrestrial species. It marked the end of the Triassic period and the onset of the Jurassic, clearing the…

An innovative new process releases the energy in coal without burning, while capturing carbon dioxide, the major greenhouse gas that is the target of emissions reduction goals. How close is it to…

On Wednesday, March 19th, a group of researchers organized by the Society for Neuroscience descended on Capitol Hill to let Congress know how important it was to reverse the budget cuts inflicted by…

Consumption of extra virgin olive oil has been linked to reduced risk of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and its benefit may lie in one component of olive oil that helps shuttle the abnormal AD proteins out…

A team of scientists has uncovered how some sea snakes have developed 'shrunken heads' - literally smaller physical features than their related species. A large head would seem to be a welcome trait…

Hunting in Africa has halved the number of primates, according to estimates, but that is not the extend of the problem. Primates help with dispersal of seed and the reduction in primates has led to a…

In my previous blog post, Introduction to the 555 Timer IC , you learned how to build an optical Theremin using a 555 Timer. The original Theremin used radio frequency interference caused by the…

Thanks to a supersensitive space telescope and some sophisticated supercomputing, scientists from the international Planck collaboration have made the closest reading yet of the most ancient story in…

The mission of the ESA Planck satellite is to observe the Universe of the past, seeing back in time, right after the Big Bang. The image that the Planck scientists revealed today is that of the…

England’s Prince Charles famously said, “(GMOs) are not in God’s plan.” If you don't have a direct line to God like he does, that's okay, you can still easily see that most resistance to GMOs is…

England’s Prince Charles famously said, “(GMOs) are not in God’s plan.” If you don't have a direct line to God like he does, that's okay, you can still easily see that most resistance to GMOs is…

Mandates and subsidies have created an artificial green energy industry. In the case of ethanol, that has led to escalating corn prices. Higher prices have encouraged some farmers to switch to…

The handling of "incidental findings" in clinical genome and exome sequencing has been addressed by the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG).  Incidental findings are health-…

The most detailed map ever created of the cosmic microwave background – the relic radiation from the Big Bang – found something a little odd.  The information extracted from Planck’s new map…

The Planck collaboration has released today data from the first 16 months of operation of their space instrument (see left). There will be a live streaming of their announcements to the public in 1.5…

In the early 1950's, a 66-year-old woman with colon cancer received a blood transfusion - but she suffered a severe rejection of the transfused blood. When writing the case study, the medical journal…

Thomas Nagel wrote one lucky paper back almost half a century ago, titled “What Is it Like to Be a Bat?”.  That title went down so well, he has basically made a living from this alone ever since…

"...spend one year one mile underground to stare at a bucket of xenon ... only to come out for your zen moment and profoundly declare "nothing happened" ... and then you spend twice as long…