There was a time when giant insects ruled the skies and it corresponded to high oxygen levels. After the evolution of birds, about 150 million years ago, insects got smaller - despite rising oxygen…

Dear squid blog, I am sorry that so many other projects have been keeping me from you lately! My love for squid remains undimmed. Just to prove it, I will share with the world a helpful chart that I…

Every two years an international standardized test is given and a lot more often than that we get treated to mainstream media claims about how bad science education is.   They never want to say…

Every two years an international standardized test is given and a lot more often than that we get treated to mainstream media claims about how bad science education is.   They never want to say…

Michael Richmond of  Rochester Institute of Technology created a simple example for how to determine the astronomical unit - the distance from Earth to the Sun and therefore the basis for all…

For the second and last time this century, the planet Venus will pass over the visible disk of our Sun for observers located in the Americas (in the evening of June 5th) and western Europe (in the…

 A visit to Punjab made any one happy . The prime reason has always been  to see canals, good roads, hardworking people, basic cleanliness. Chandigarh  a  Union Territory …

Are Pine trees major source of forest fires ? Its people who burn trees. Recently I had a chance to visit Solan and read a local news paper. A news item in The Tribune Chandigarh date June 3rd 2012…

The issue of how dense the dark matter is near Earth is far from settled. Recent work by Moni Bidin, Carraro, Mendez and Smith holds that the density of dark matter near Earth is 0.04 gigaelectron…

A new durable, environmentally-benign (we all hope) blue pigment has also been found to have unusual characteristics in reflecting heat - it's much better at it than most blue pigments in use.  …

Count on economics, the dismal science, to claim that the one economy not crippled in 2012, is in peril. Change it must, argues political scientist Victor Shih of Northwestern University in…

Count on economics, the dismal science, to claim that the one economy not crippled in 2012, is in peril. Change it must, argues political scientist Victor Shih of Northwestern University in…

Is immortality really ideal? Is the confusion and befuddlement worth surviving the times and ages?  Much like Mary Shelley’s monster that arose from the dead, would we be wretched, dejected, and…

Very different complex networks, like global air traffic and neural networks, share very similar 'backbones', say a group of mathematicians, and by stripping each network down to their essential…

Tuesday, June 5th, 2012 at 3:03 PM PDT (California), Venus will do something we on Earth will have witnessed for only the eighth since the invention of the telescope - it will cross in front of the…

What evolutionary reason would tiny insects 100 million years ago have for collecting and transporting Gingko pollen?  They had highly specialized hairs with a ringed structure to increase their…

"Chagas Disease: “The New HIV/AIDS of the Americas”" screams the headline of an editorial in the open access journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, written primarily by two principal investigators…

Almost exactly a year ago, I made a medium storm in the water glass by publishing my exchange with what I ironically called the "Future King of Physics". I then asked Perimeter Institute in Canada,…

Diagnostic tools are getting small, small enough to fit in a person's pocket, and one huge benefit for medical researchers would be a way to easily move and even mix small samples of a liquid. …

Georgy Nikolaevich Flerov (1913-1990) is the father of the superheavy element production in the USSR (now Russia). Under his guidance scientists at the Flerov Nuclear Institute in Dubna were…