Oil has been the strategic asset since it was discovered.  The price of oil reflects everything from the underlying value of the US dollar, to the general level of industrial economic activity…

Economists of all stripes for the last generation have demonstrated their audacity time and time again, holding dearly onto their attempts to make Economics a hard science.  Though good…

Economists and Obama often wonder why the Stimulus didn't work.  Libertarians and the GOP think they know the answer, though they suffer from intellectual Fundamentalism of the same sort all…

Industry does quite a lot of basic research today but government funds the majority.  Prior to and during World War II those ratios were inverted and the private sector funded most basic…

It's a natural proclivity to play the what-if game. What if we could go back and change things? What if we could alter some particular trait about ourselves or an event? Would we do it? It's a…

This week's Friday Fossil is Helicoprion. What can I say. This is one weird bastard. And it used to look even weirder, The story is like this. At the turn of the last century, people started to…

Recently scientifically 2.0 so topical Schrödinger's cat jumped into being in the 1935 three-part article (in German) in Die Naturwissenschaften, just at the end of part one: Man kann auch ganz…

In a display of nonchalance that should teach us a thing or two, the ATLAS collaboration has put an end to the Easter Higgs Rumour (EHR), which brought the blogosphere in an excited state for at…

Events of International Year of Chemistry kept me from writing for some while. I was so absorbed with all the research writing these days, that I could not find space and time to read anything…

In 1970, Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori described what he called the "uncanny valley", which was a graph showing our affinity for a machine to its likeness of humans.   As robots look and act…

Leukotriene receptor antagonists (LTRAs)are easier to use and just as effective as conventional treatment with inhalers, according to a new study led by the University of East Anglia (UEA). …

I missed a cool paper last year on the effects of squid ink on angiogenesis--the growth of new blood vessels. And therefore I also missed the chance to run the sensationalist headline SQUID INK BLOTS…

As a teenager, in the early 1960s, I developed an interest in botany, and in particular ferns and the so-called “fern-allies”.  So, living in the drier South-East of England, I welcomed trips to…

About women and lesbian sex, 'an experimental phase in college' is a litany in humor circles.  When it comes to casual sex among women, everyone seems to have an opinion, a statistic, and…

About women and lesbian sex, 'an experimental phase in college' is a litany in humor circles.  When it comes to casual sex among women, everyone seems to have an opinion, a statistic, and…

The Sea Isn't Level In all discussions of sea level it is absolutely vital to keep in mind at all times that the sea is a very dynamic ravenous beast that wants to devour your coastal lands. In…

In science, you need a theory, an approach, and a way to measure the results.  In politics, you only need an opinion and a microphone.  Therefore, it is interesting that a major Green…

I often joke, in reference to a black person, woman or gay complaining about some reference or joke in society or in the media about them, that I am all five groups every one of them jokes about,…

Does torture work?  Hard to say, it certainly has proponents and the line of where people would use it versus the lives it might save is a subjective one but certainly whether it works at all…

Does torture work?  Hard to say, it certainly has proponents and the line of where people would use it versus the lives it might save is a subjective one but certainly whether it works at all…