The diffusion of advanced graphical tools that we have witnessed in the course of the last two decades has caused a corresponding evolution in the way physicists display their data. True, there still…

What is the origin of bird digits? This question has caused a lot of head-scratching and beard-stroking in evolutionary biologists. Paleontological evidence suggests that the three digits in birds…

Asking a specific question which has a specific answer is the sign of fertile soil instead of another shovel full of fertilizer. One question leads to variations on that query. Even dull looking…

I know, I know! This is totally a cop-out blog post. But I've been super busy compiling the latest Circus of the Spineless, which I'm hosting over at my homepage, the Cephalopodiatrist. There's some…

Feel lazy?  Maybe you can blame your genes. Specially-bred mice which had two genes removed, which control the protein AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK), an enzyme that is switched on when you…

People communicate in bursts. In communication, our behavior does not happen in a homogenous way over time, but rather there is universal behavior in which there is no communication, followed by…

Everyone agrees what the LHC needs is more art. Okay, no one actually thinks that.  What the LHC needs is to find a Higgs boson or a whole bunch of Europeans outside physics are going to be…

The Encyclopedia of Life (EOL), a free, online collaborative tool, is expanded in its second edition released today, offering information on more than one-third of all known species on Earth.EOLv2…

Breast-feeding mothers are far more likely to demonstrate a 'mama bear' effect', aggressively protecting their infants and themselves , than women who bottle-feed their babies or who are non-mothers…

A hadron collider is a really nice toy to play with. Sometimes when I look at all those scientists busying themselves with the design, the construction, and the operation of the Large Hadron Collider…

Sitting for hours at your desk is bad for you, even fatal in the long run. Paul Knoepfler has recently again made me aware of this – read his Thinking on your feet: practical suggestions for creating…

Chemistry space refers to the combinatorial and configurational space spanned by all possible molecules (i.e. those combination of atoms allowed by the rules of valence in energetically stable…

Christianity has its controversies, like the original date on which Easter is based, but it's a celebration and therefore symbolic.   Muslims are a little more rigorous in their approach and…

Christianity has its controversies, like the original date on which Easter is based, but it's a celebration and therefore symbolic.   Muslims are a little more rigorous in their approach and…

It slips from my fingers Cliched grains of sand. I fill my days with work Because it slips, more each Passing day...the slips Growing faster, exponentially, Until I feel that I am…

Stalin hated independence, he hated religion, he hated culture, and he hated 'Girl With An Oar', a statue by Ivan Shadr. Well, it's a 23 foot tall nude so I imagine plenty of people in the West would…

Stalin hated independence, he hated religion, he hated culture, and he hated 'Girl With An Oar', a statue by Ivan Shadr. Well, it's a 23 foot tall nude so I imagine plenty of people in the West would…

Belief systems are the stories we tell ourselves to define our personal sense of "reality".  Every human being has a belief system that they utilize, and it is through this mechanism that we…

The Lacey Act is one of few government regulations I have praised for its effectiveness.  Few government regulations are actually designed to help anyone, they are either designed to hobble…

A new study, published in Science, describes a multi-gene synthetic circuit that can distinguish between cancer and non-cancer cells, after which it can target the cancer cells for destruction.…