What happens in our brain when we see banknotes being ripped up? Or, put another way, “Is our attitude to money like that to any other tool even though its use is symbolic and is not implemented in…

Professor Steven Chu, who was appointed Energy Secretary under as much optimism as can be imagined in late 2008, has officially resigned, a move everyone knew was coming. Except for his irrational…

Sociologists have settled an important debate - namely, do women really want a man that does housework. The answer is 'no', according to an important new paper which found that married men and women…

It's no shock to know there is no anthropology without beer. No history either. Really, it took alcohol to get someone to write down mundane events in longhand.  And beer-making equipment was…

figshare, a Digital Science portfolio company, has announced a new partnership with open access publisher Public Library of Science (PLoS) to host the supplemental data for all seven PLoS journals,…

A new paper outlines the many pitfalls associated with simulation methods such as Monte Carlo algorithms and other commonly used molecular dynamics approaches. The context of this paper is the…

If a numerical model simulating 25,000 generations of evolution within computers is to be believed, Cornell University engineering and robotics researchers may have discovered why biological networks…

There is a reason for the disparity between charitable giving among people who advocate smaller government and larger government; people who advocate larger government already feel like they are…

Two new research papers signal how the next class of powerful medications may currently reside at the bottom of the ocean.  Sea life studies could aid researchers in several ways, including the…

A new estimate is that each intravenous drug user contracting Hepatitis C could infect around 20 other people with the virus, half of these transmissions occurring in the first two years after the…

During the short time that Roy Thomas took over as writer of the Fantastic Four from Stan Lee, the original writer, it got a lot better.  I know, I know, that is blasphemy.(1) There is a reason…

Sometimes, conversations/threads have a useful life that extends beyond either the presently limited lifetime for comments stimulated by a particular article, or the context of the article that…

Some time this month, in Poker Flat, Alaska, a team of scientists from  The Aerospace Corporation of El Segundo, Calif.and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center of Greenbelt, Md., will launch a…

Biologists have discovered a bioelectric signal that can identify cells that are likely to develop into tumors. The researchers also found that they could lower the incidence of cancerous cells by…

Here is a conundrum in the culture wars; genetically modified tobacco has been shown to have numerous beneficial effects and now another one has been added. The treatment for rabies (painful shots,…

Mathematicians have shown how to use an algorithm for analyzing void space in sphere packing where the spheres need not all be the same size.  This method could be applied to analyze the…

The alternate medicine industry is about to be dealt a massive blow. Progressive Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) has decided not to run for re-election in 2014. What does that mean?  His political…

There are projections that coral reefs will decline due to global warming but evolution disagrees. A number of coral species survive at seawater temperatures far higher than estimates for the tropics…

The influenza virus, ever-wiley, has decided to hit America early and hard this year.   The flu season is always full of uncertainty.  How bad will it be?  How well will the annual…

There was an old man and a second, older man who was considerably older than the old man; they were visiting a very old man.  The afternoon passed without them saying a word.  As the sun…