Every friday from now on I'm going to pick out a cool fossil and stick it here. It's not necessarily going to be from the recent literature, and I'm an invertebrate paleontologist, so don't expect…

Really?  Seriously  according to OK Cupid's analysis of their data from asking 642533 people the question  5% of men (gay and straight) and 10% of women (gay and straight) think the…

Open Thread #1 I have started this blog entry under 'random thoughts' for the benefit of those of my readers who may with to discuss a broader spectrum of my topics than is usual in scientific…

Given the general fear regarding radiation levels around Japan, this seems the perfect time to give a short introduction to this important topic. There is a lot of confusion regarding radiation and…

Japan Earthquake Increases Flood Risk In Fukushima During the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake in Japan, the ground level sank along the coast near Onahama Port,  Fukushima Prefecture. This has caused…

Borrowing from the tactics of Bill Maher, I propose a New Rule:  When putting forth the claim that something is "sustainable," it must be with reference to a comparable item or process that is…

The CDF collaboration sent to the preprint arxiv a new paper a few days ago. In it, they report on a measurement of the mass difference of top and anti-top quarks. The result would not be worth…

40 percent of world’s population lives in coastal areas. Coastal areas have different characteristics where saline water from sea, its winds carrying salt, salt marshes, inland sea water vegetation…

Recent research indicates that bilingual speakers can outperform monolinguals in certain mental abilities, such as editing out irrelevant information and focusing on important information, said…

Vegetation line along rail road or connecting roads was such a common site that sometime trees would even obstruct the passage, in my childhood. They widened the roads and cut the trees . Jaipur -…

While any individual action in a zero-tolerance culture will be evidence of endemic racism, the plain fact is actual racism is below any level in history and dropping fast.   That makes it…

This is a butterfish: NOAA describes it unflatteringly as a "small, bony foodfish." Butterfish live along the Atlantic coast of North America from Florida to Newfoundland, and they've been fished…

My blogging output here is scarce this week, because I am spending my time at the NEUTEL 2011 conference in Venice. I am producing some posts summarizing the talks I hear at the conference, together…

South Korea has agreed to send some 50 tons of boron from its reserves to Japan to help fight the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima reactor plant. The scientists at TEPCO have been sent samples for…

Researchers writing in Nature have stated that quartz deposits may be a prediction tool for earthquakes.   Along with earthquakes, underground quartz deposits worldwide may also be behind…

Researchers writing in Nature have stated that quartz deposits may be a prediction tool for earthquakes.   Along with earthquakes, underground quartz deposits worldwide may also be behind…

The UK Government's Chief Scientific Adviser, Professor Sir John Beddington, is in Tokyo trying to dampen expat fears that the Fukushima nuclear reactors could possibly ruin their lives. I had…

Royally Screwed Getting screwed - in the sense of being at the receiving end of a whole bunch of badness - has its origins in carpentry.  It's nothing to do with thumbscrews.  It has…

What I Had For Breakfast #2 Four whole fried chickens, and a Coke. My bike's got cop tires, cop suspensions, cop shocks. It's a model made before lycra was invented, so it'll run good on regular…

Is Fukushima now more serious than the 1979 Three Mile Island incident in the U.S.A., as US Energy Secretary Steven Chu recently claimed?     Hard to say yet.  But a…