We engage in wishful thinking all the time. Infomercials continue to exist because people continue to buy the products. Diet pills fly off the shelves because we want an easy fix. The HCG diet is…

The brain receives a variety of sensory information, then synthesizes and analyzes the data by sending it into various centers and loops.  It then determines a course of action and communicates…

“There exists no gold standard for the measurement of snoring.” But a joint research team from the Human Sleep Research Laboratory at the Stanford Research Institute in the US and Ludwig-Maximilians…

The ICARUS collaboration - operating a neutrino detector sitting not far from the OPERA experiment in the underground Laboratori del Gran Sasso in Italy - produced a refutation of the superluminality…

In our modern culture, we have both the politicization of science and the scientization of politics. They sound similar but the goals are different - the first obviously seeks to inject political…

Measurement of the neutrino velocity with the ICARUS detector at the CNGS beam http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1203/1203.3433.pdf "_The expected time of flight difference between the…

There have been some studies written on a schema called "the sick role" which defines a person who is disabled in some way.  This concept, developed by Talcott Parsons) posits that within our…

Quasars, powered by supermassive black holes, are among the brightest objects in the universe, outshining the total starlight of their host galaxies.  Quasar host galaxies are hard or even…

After marriage your well-being dips and after divorce it rises; after childbirth, relationship satisfaction stays permanently below its pre-birth level -– so says a meta-analysis of 2,159 studies,…

People on the left - to international readers they go under the umbrella of 'liberals' in America, but run the gamut from social authoritarian progressives to activists to freedom-loving liberals in…

In areas where freshwater is scarce, recycling of wastewater seems to be common sense.  Perhaps not, argues Amy Townsend-Small, assistant professor of geology and geography at the University of…

Like vaccines and autism or genetically modified potatoes and immune systems or DDT causing cancer, some myths stick around so long they become truth despite any evidence - and cell phone radiation…

Thanks to my awesome brother, I have now acquired and read the full text of the paper I blogged about yesterday: "Purification and in vitro antioxidative effects of giant squid muscle peptides on…

Mind is usually considered that part of a person that allows a unified conscious awareness of the world, our bodies, and experiences, including thinking and feeling. Since mind seems to depend upon…

UPDATE: I've learned more about how antioxidants work since writing this post. Maybe this is a sign that I've become cynical, but when I first read that peptides found in squid skin can slow aging,…

The old saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words.  In this case, a picture is worth millions.  Millions of tons of carbon dioxide that could be saved if we stopped throwing food…

ECOLOGY   Humans are the most successful consumer of resources that Earth has produced. Our success has altered our planet. Humanity is currently experiencing limits to further growth. We…

As a society, we Westerners exalt individualism and self-reliance, and yet our biology moves us in other directions. Humans evolved as social animals, and we posses a number of behaviors that…

A randomized controlled trial showed that fear of flying can be cured independently of drug condition after 4 sessions of virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET). The study introduced a new treatment…

The Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment has discovered a new type of neutrino oscillation in which the particles appear to vanish as they travel. The rate of oscillations was much larger than many…