Dear Squid of the World, Excuse me. What is this? I have been your friend and advocate for years. No, DECADES. (Two, to be specific.) I have championed your cause to family and friends, students and…

Researchers with National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), one of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) labs, say that the United States can double its energy productivity by 2030 — and do so…

The base pairs that hold together two pieces of RNA, the older cousin of DNA, are some of the most important molecular interactions in living cells. Many scientists believe that these base pairs were…

I believe in the wisdom of crowds. If I take one PhD in science and ask them to guess the number of pennies in a jar, it's not going to be close, but if I ask 1,000 regular people to guess, the mean…

Evidence from Siberian caves suggests that a global temperature rise of 1.5 degrees Celsius could see permanently frozen ground thaw over a large area of Siberia, which would threaten to release…

A year or so back Carl Zimmer asked the science world if life could be defined in three words.I don’t think he would have been too concerned if the answer was in four or five or six words, the point…

Studies by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)  Agroecosystems Management Research Unit in Lincoln, Nebraska  are shedding some light on the microbes that dwell in cattle manure—what…

In "The Descent of Man" (1871), while contemplating how humans learned to speak, Charles Darwin speculated that language might have had its origins in singing, which "might have given rise to words…

My favorite star, our very own Sun, has a multitude of spectacular features she shows off with grandeur. In fact, the Sun was the subject of my thesis and so she is extra special to me. When you…

Every year in Germany, approximately 280,000 people suffer a myocardial infarction; more than 52,000 die as a result. Due to an occluded vessel, parts of the heart muscle no longer have sufficient…

If your child likes playing an instrument, or you want them to be well-rounded, by all means get them music lessons; but parents who bought into social science claims that it makes kids more…

If your child likes playing an instrument, or you want them to be well-rounded, by all means get them music lessons; but parents who bought into social science claims that it makes kids more…

If I were a virus, I think I’d like to be Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV). What is that, you ask? Exactly my point. Our lungs are the only organ in our body that is exposed to the filth of our…

There are now many affordable and even out right cheap tablets - computers with touch screens - available, useful computers for even less than the famous $100 laptops were supposed to be. These are…

Not long ago, we acquired a range of inexpensive storage vessels, ideal for keeping leftovers in the fridge before they go into yours truly, the family dustbin.  Here is an example: the steel…

Deficit thinking is the belief by elites that the public is simply unaware of or unable to understand science and that lack of knowledge prevents the right policy decision. It rarely works as a…

Solar geo-engineering is one proposed approach to mitigating the effects of climate change - the idea being to deflect some of the sun's incoming radiation.  Ignoring the technology issues, in a…

Researchers have described a new technique that might one day reveal in higher detail than ever before the composition and characteristics of the deep Earth. There's just one catch: it can't exist.…

Turkey is the most secular of the Muslim countries in the world - some women wear headscarves (hijab), some do not. They are optional. So when Turkish astrophysicst Rennan Pekünlü, who teaches at Ege…

Turkey is the most secular of the Muslim countries in the world - some women wear headscarves (hijab), some do not. They are optional. So when Turkish astrophysicst Rennan Pekünlü, who teaches at Ege…