Reading media accounts, it seems the past decade has witnessed what seems to be a cluster of large earthquakes, with massive events in Sumatra, Chile, Haiti and Japan since 2004. Some hypothesize…

King Richard III, the last of the Plantagenets, ruled England from 1483 until he was defeated at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, the next-to-last major battle in what would later be called The…

The anti-vaccination culture is making headway. CDC has reported 17 outbreaks and 222 measles cases from 211, mostly in unvaccinated people - the highest since 1996. To identify areas of under…

Melvin Calvin at Berkeley in 1945 showed that Chlorella could take up 14CO2 and produce 3-phosphoglycerate.  This article is for wider audience interested to know that carbon fixation cycle…

Despite extensive regulations and preventative efforts, lead poisoning, which can damage the brain, kidneys, and nervous and reproductive systems, still occurs in the United States.  Babies are…

21% of adults in the United States have at least one tattoo, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and on occasion outbreaks of nontuberculous mycobacterial (NTM) skin infections have…

A key aspect of being human, in the literal and figurative sense, is rationality.  It separates us from our pets. Not in a good way, we are a lot less rational than other animals and we even…

"Earlier this week, the magazine "Mother Jones" posted a helpful little story on the question of whether the health-conscious consumer should wash organic produce. Was it necessary, the author…

"Earlier this week, the magazine "Mother Jones" posted a helpful little story on the question of whether the health-conscious consumer should wash organic produce. Was it necessary, the author…

Physician John Smallberries said to me, “Twenty years ago, I didn’t even know what the word autism meant. It was rare.” But since then something has shifted.  Whether it was music, vaccines,…

http://www.flickr.com/photos/royluck/with/6134108264/ I’ve posted a blog about why GMO labeling is basically illogical.  If you take the time to read the actual proposition, there are at…

Secular humanists not feminist enough for you?  Atheism not social justice-y enough for you? Okay, on a science site you are stopping me right there and saying, "Isn't atheism just about…

Secular humanists not feminist enough for you?  Atheism not social justice-y enough for you? Okay, on a science site you are stopping me right there and saying, "Isn't atheism just about…

"Man, know thyself" was the challenge of ancient Greek philosophers and it has been the goal of mankind since. Thousands of years later, neuroscientists are trying to decipher how the human brain…

Do plants have muscles?  Strictly speaking, no, but time-lapse photography shows that they can be quite thuggish in behaviour. Following last year’s BBC TV series on Blooming Botany and writing…

In a long-term marriage,  men tend to drink less than they did while single. That's good.  But women drink more, say sociologists.  The results are based on surveys and interviews, so…

Everybody seems to be talking about this new would-be particle, allegedly observed in diphoton decays in this paper by Kh. Abraamyan et al. at JINR, and consistent with an earlier claim of two…

Americans learned this week that the leader of the free world likes to brew his own “superb” beer. The Washington Post reported that President Obama likes microbrews “so much so that he bought a beer…

Here's an episode of "Futurama" waiting to happen; a nodosaur roamed suburban Washington about 110 million years ago and evidence has just been found. You'd think the ground near a sidewalk…

Here's an episode of "Futurama" waiting to happen; a nodosaur roamed suburban Washington about 110 million years ago and evidence has just been found. You'd think the ground near a sidewalk…