If you looked at the "Black Marble" images of Earth at night released by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration this week, you may have noticed bright areas in the largely…

Giant crevasses that penetrate upward from the bottom of the   Larsen C Ice Shelf, the largest remaining ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula, make it more susceptible to collapse, according to…

Toxoplasmosis is caused by the Toxoplasma gondii parasite, which experts estimate infects 30 to 50 percent of the global population.  The infection is also found in animals, especially domestic…

The early results of a trial to treat leukemia with a WT1 DNA vaccine looks promising,  according to a presentation at the DNA Vaccines 2012 conference in California by Christian Ottensmeier,…

When George W. Bush was elected, progressives claimed he was not only not their president, but not the president at all.   A homicidal maniac in Iraq was 'elected' but George Bush was not, they…

A new preprint is out in the arxiv today, detailing the results of a new analysis of neutrino speeds performed by the OPERA collaboration using proton spills of the CNGS beam produced during…

Tibetan and Ethiopian highlanders share a biological adaptation that enables them to thrive in the low oxygen levels of high altitudes, but the ability to pass on the trait appears to be linked to…

Plant growth patterns are influenced by a variety of stimuli, including gravity. Terrestrial plant roots exhibit characteristic behaviors called 'waving' and 'skewing' and those are thought to be…

The world's smallest reaction chamber has a mixing volume that can be measured in femtoliters - that's a million billionths of a liter. The reaction chamber actually consists of nothing more than a…

What is ENCODE ? ENCODE, an acronym for Encyclopedia of DNA Elements, is a publicly funded research projectinitiated in 2003 by National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI). Results of…

Are there really less pesticide residues on organic crops?  The answer might not be as simple as you think. A few weeks ago it was announced that for the first time in the history of USDA-…

NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite was able to estimate rainfall rates  of Typhoon Bopha over the Philippines, where severe flooding killed several hundred people. Bopha…

A recent article pointed out a radical conclusion published in the British Medical Journal that reducing dietary fat intake could lead to weight loss and reduced BMI. Obviously such radical results…

The Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) on NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is now 10 times better at catching the brief outbursts of high-energy light, known as  terrestrial gamma-ray flashes (…

Fatty liver disease, diabetes and obesity are health issues that are not going to be solved during the holiday season.  The solution to much of it, healthier eating, is not realistic and so…

Genetic research has a great deal of benefit but its mysteries, such as the lack of identified genetic determinants that explain heritability of complex traits, leave a lot of biology open to…

 A large problem in making predictions about Antarctic melting is that we currently have insufficient knowledge about the ocean circulation near large glaciers in West Antarctica. This means…

Opinion surveys used by researchers from the Guttmacher Institute show overestimated figures of abortion in the Federal District of Mexico (Mexico DF) by as much as 10-fold, according to a paper in…

In the US, we could soon have the government monitoring everything we do. So we might as well be happier about more effective ways to be fingerprinted.  Integrated Biometrics, LLC has gotten…

About one year ago I started playing competitive chess again, after a hiatus of almost a decade. Because of the hiatus and some change in the organization of chess in Italy, my status from that of…