About a month ago I held a three-hour course on "Statistics for Data Analysis in High-Energy Physics" in the nice setting of Engelberg, a mountain location just south of Zurich. Putting together the…

Why I Am Peter Gleick When your opponent has dipped his gloves in glue and glass and has kicked you in the nuts, most people would agree that if you depart somewhat from the Queensbury rules the…

Does wearing makeup increase waitress’ tips? Researchers at the Université de Bretagne Sud, and the Université du Maine, France, recently performed a field experiment (with two waitresses) to find…

Before the telegraph was invented, messages could travel as fast as the fastest mode of transport available. Today, however, advanced communication technologies have changed the scenario to a great…

There have been several articles talking about opposition to GMO foods as being "anti-science" and raising the issue of the precautionary principle, but in fairness, we have to consider what the role…

While perusing the news last night, I was horrified to come across a set of articles telling me that less sleep is better for academic performance.  If that’s the case, I should be in tip-top…

Sophisticated physicists appreciate the dance of abstract symbols. I need to build something. The abstract is more real when made out of clay and pipe cleaners. In this blog on the 1D Euler Lagrange…

The Heartland Institute and Murdoch Media The Heartland Institute story broke on February 14th.  The revelation that anti-science bunkum has been funded by corporate dollars was no surprise to…

Introduction Solar energy, accumulated under earth in the form of fossil fuels since the inception of life, accounts for more than 97 per cent of the world consumption of energy of which the share of…

In the midst of CNN's non-stop coverage of a deceased singer whose biggest career hit was a cover of a Dolly Parton song, there may be a ray of rational sunlight shining down on a person worthy of…

Nobel Prize winner Jack Szostak recently wrote an opinion piece titled "Attempts to Define Life Do Not Help to Understand the Origin of Life" which was published in the Journal of Biomolecular…

Nobel Prize winner Jack Szostak recently wrote an opinion piece titled "Attempts to Define Life Do Not Help to Understand the Origin of Life" which was published in the Journal of Biomolecular…

In my ever-continuing quest to become an actual adult, I have recently begun to cook. I use a real oven and everything! In my usual encounter with the oven it takes just a few minutes of pre-heating…

February 23rd 1987 is a day indelibly imprinted on the minds of everyone interested in astrophysics. At 7:36 GMT that day, now 25 years ago, the big one hit us. There was no escape. For 13…

What are the survival prospects for female characters in the James Bond movies? A new research project from Cleveland State University and Kent State University performed a quantitative content…

The Polywater debacle has been called ‘one of the most famous mistaken scientific research programs of the past half-century’. It was initially feared that the USSR’s discovery of highly viscous…

A nice new search for heavy quarks has been completed by the ATLAS collaboration in 7 TeV proton-proton collisions data collected in 2011. The ideas behind the search are instructive to describe, so…

Last month, we were treated to the biggest solar storm since 2005, generating some of the most dazzling northern lights in recent memory. The source of that storm, and others like it, was the sun's…

Signals can tell cells to act cancerous, surviving, growing and reproducing out of control. And signals can also tell cells with cancerous characteristics to stop growing or to die. In breast cancer,…

A research team from the Department of Biology at the University of Victoria, Canada, have, for the first time, investigated the  behavioural responses of domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) to the…