Gravity works, it is a dominant force in physics, but at the very large and very small scales it holds a lot of mysteries left to be solved.  Foe example, when it comes to stars in young star…

If you have watched the strange, sad decline of psychology over the last decade, you may have started to wonder if any conclusions are legitimate. With evolutionary psychology claiming voting…

If you have watched the strange, sad decline of psychology over the last decade, you may have started to wonder if any conclusions are legitimate. With evolutionary psychology claiming voting…

In the UK, pharmaceutical innovation seems to be dying. The supply of new medicines has conspicuously dwindled in recent decades but that is not due to innovation issues, it is because regulations…

The hypothesis that tomato fruits from organic farming and greater stressing conditions associated with organic farming leads to more nutritional compounds, such as phenolics and vitamin C, recently…

First some exciting news about space-flight.  Then I'll finish with a followup (and speculative) reflection on our recent multiple encounters with space rocks. = NASA's NIAC: New and Innovative…

The Sun's eruptive events can change even more radically than the weather in Kentucky. Some eruptive events come just with a solar flare, while some provide additional ejection of solar material, a…

Imagine that you’re a young rat. You’re in the woods, doing rat things among the dead foliage. Suddenly, off to your left, you hear a sound that you've never heard before. It’s loud, it’s…

Sunspots on the surface of the Sun happen when magnetic fields rearrange and realign, forming dark spots Over the course of the last 48 hours, scientists watched a giant sunspot form - it has…

Meg Urry was on the senior scientific staff at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), which runs the Hubble Space Telescope for NASA. That's no surprise to people outside the government-…

In some Chinese cities, breathing has recently become demonstrably hazardous to your health.  According to the US embassy's monitoring station, air pollution has skipped over unhealthy, exceeded…

By recording the automatic brain wave responses of 100 school-aged children to speech sounds, researchers found that the very best readers encoded the sound most consistently while the poorest…

Howard Blume over at “looseendsdotme” in Assisted Suicide for Jumpers provides us with a strange article on my Suicidal Philosophy (which is as yet largely unpublished for reasons that should be…

Understanding how and why diversification occurs is important for understanding why there are so many species on Earth.  A new study found that similar, or even identical, mutations can occur…

A biological marker in the immune system predicts our ability to fight off the common cold, starting at about age 22, according to a recent paper in JAMA.  The study found that the length of…

Can you read minds? No, you cannot, but with some fluorescent protein and a tiny microscope implanted in a rodent's head, Stanford scientists have come close. Their technique can observe hundreds of…

Species facing widespread and rapid environmental changes can sometimes evolve quickly enough to dodge the extinction bullet. Studies have shown that the more gradual the change, the better the…

Liposomes are small fat capsules, often added to beauty products, because of the claim that liposomes are capable of transporting active ingredients deep into the skin - when the active ingredients…

Tranylcypromine, TCP, is an antidepressant drug used since the 1960s but may also hold promise for treating sickle cell disease, according to a new finding in mice and human red blood cells. …

Scientists at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) have created a 'solar sponge' which captures and then releases carbon dioxide using the power of sunlight. The '…