The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s federal regulatory process is stifling commercial investment in the development of genetically engineered animals for food, warns a task force led by a U.C.…

The American Tradition Institute would like to know who, besides taxpayers, pays prominent NASA researcher James Hansen, a leading voice in climate change discussions. The American Association for…

A quasar named ULAS J1120+0641, powered by a black hole with a mass two billion times that of the Sun, is by far the brightest object yet discovered in the early Universe - yet.  Quasars are…

On a recent post, I was asked how facilitated communication supporters explain the tests that show FC doesn't work. On something so easily shown to be false, why does this persist? Why are major…

Parental stress seems to influence the progeny of organisms. For example, studies have shown that, if mice are stressed, their offspring will show signs of anxiety, even if they receive the usual…

The good news-- I am writing a four eBook series with O'Reilly (publishers of MAKE) on four Do-It-Yourself Space topics!  Woo hoo! Now the advice portion.  I occasionally have a habit of…

Given the news recently about yet another E. coli outbreak, you may be concerned E. coli is not just a plague in 'organically' processed and prepared vegetables but perhaps in regular steak  -…

I am quite happy today to announce here that there is a new blog to visit, and to bookmark!, for those among you who are interested to know what does a PhD in physics do after he or she graduates. In…

Jackson Pollock (d.1956) is famous to mainstream people more for the movie about his troubled life than his art, but his drip paintings have intrigued more than art historians. A quantitative…

Does a police officer really need a four-year degree?   Or a plumber or a journalist or a musician?  The 'college is a right' experiment in America is now two decades old and it has led to…

Does a police officer really need a four-year degree?   Or a plumber or a journalist or a musician?  The 'college is a right' experiment in America is now two decades old and it has led to…

Harry Lonsdale, a 79 year old millionaire scientist, has launched a $50,000 prize to promote research in the origin of life. The prize could potentially be complemented by $2,000,000 (!) of research…

An innovative gene therapy technique, known as genome editing, ‘searches’ a specific mutated gene and fixes it. Now, for the first time, it has been shown to work in living animals. In the study, the…

I think of myself as non-violent, a purple guy in the blue state of Massachusetts.When it comes to proposals in science though, I go for head shots. Nature doesn’t care if we keep repackaging…

I feel quite grateful to the DZERO collaboration for publishing today in the Cornell arxiv the preprint of their search for neutral MSSM Higgs bosons in the tau-pair decay mode. Not more than 12…

Ponds are interesting things because their boundaries are always changing.  On a very small scale there's a lot of drama, such as the snakes fishing for Mosquito fish (gambusia) trapped in a…

Endocarditis is a dangerous and sometimes lethal infection of the heart sometimes caused after a dental procedure.     Streptococcus mutans is a bacterium best known for causing cavities.…

A pair of studies presented Saturday and today at the American Diabetes Association's Scientific Sessions in San Diego suggest diet sodas may be a dietary head fake for the body. …

In the immortal Richard Donner classic "Scrooged", the following exchange takes place between Frank, the president of the network, and his boss, Preston: Preston: Do you know how many cats there are…

It's easy to hate the government.  It's a faceless bureaucracy that can easily grind you down to nothing if you are on the wrong side of it.   But there are higher orders of contempt…