If you work in experimental high-energy physics you soon acquire a particular sensitivity to the economical display of relevant information. Producing figures that convey the most meaning with the…

A couple of dead giant squid have turned up--almost exactly on opposite sides of the globe! Surely this is some kind of portent? Architeuthis #1 was spotted off the coast of Tenerife, in the Canary…

You ever wondered why it is that we share only 50% of our genes with a sibling but 98% with chimpanzees? Humans are a freak of nature. We are in between a so called ‘tournament species’ and a ‘pair…

In microfluidic devices, small separated droplets flow in a stream of carrier liquid. Occasionally, selected droplets have to be merged to carry out a chemical reaction, which can be greatly…

Why would Mohamed Atta graciously let a car rental agent know the check oil light was on in the car he returned and then help crash a plane full of people and fuel into the World Trade Center on Sept…

A fossil discovered in northeast China has pushed back mammal evolution 35 million years and provides new information about the earliest ancestors of most of today's mammal species—the placental…

Successful aging and positive quality of life indicators correlate with sexual satisfaction in older women, according to a report in the Journal of the American Geriatric Society which also shows…

The authors of a new study in Nature Neuroscience studied mechanisms used by the brain to store information for a short period of time. The cells of several neural circuits store information by…

There's long been a maddening belief by a subset of psychologists who have never actually been to the Eastern part of the world that Asia is some collectivist Utopia. When it comes to inflated self…

How many organisms live on this little planet of ours? A pretty straight-forward question. The answer, however, is much more enigmatic. Estimates range from a careful 3 million to a huge 100 million.…

FutureTense is a radio program in Australia that I had absolutely never heard of until they decided to interview me.  It's time to remedy this for that handful of you out there that, similarly,…

In 1963, Jerry Gretzinger began doodling, a rectangle with a crosshatch that looked like a top down view of a housing plan.   Then he began expanding it until he created an entire fantasy…

In 1963, Jerry Gretzinger began doodling, a rectangle with a crosshatch that looked like a top down view of a housing plan.   Then he began expanding it until he created an entire fantasy…

Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) already account for one third of all global deaths and raising, with effective heart regeneration therapies yet to be developed despite worldwide research efforts.…

Complexity theorists have some bad news for people who insist that unless it carries an organic label, food is evil; a group from the New England Complex Systems Institute says they've…

Cooking is not a modern invention, concludes new research.   It likely originated 1.9 million years ago, according to results they determined using statistical analysis and evolutionary trees.…

Pseudomonas aeruginosa (see figure 1) is a human pathogen that colonizes the respiratory and gastrointestinal tract, where it can cause life-threatening infections in patients with a compromised…

"In a world of string theory, I can be the Pope [...]. I just need to modify dilatonic Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet theory with low-energy heterotic string theory and it's all quite easy." H. Campbell

Webometrics faces many challenges, not the least of which is a dearth of tools capable of measuring the Web with any degree of accuracy.  Most academic and professional Webometrics analysts…

Almost only devote religious people like Obama are allowed to climb to power in the West. Germany’s chancellor Merkel had to play down that she was a physicist in order to ensure the voters trust her…