Biodegradable sneakers?   Anything with 'green' slapped on it is going to sell to a certain audience but, as science always knew and the public discovered about ethanol, just because activists…

The weather is a formidable foe for all, save one - the United States Postal Service. Herodotus' words on the New York General Post Office near Penn Station often stand in as the unofficial USPS…

Despite the culture war on smokers, the idea that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer or lung disease is largely a myth.   Anti-smoking groups are a multi-billion dollar industry on their own…

Readers of this blog know that I often discuss here the latest results of searches of Supersymmetric (SUSY) particles -nowadays furthered by the CDF and DZERO experiments at the Fermilab Tevatron…

Illex argentinus, our old friend the Argentine shortfin squid, is not looking so good this year. To recap: the fishery crashed in 2009 and rebounded somewhat in 2010. Now it's down again at the…

Nothing makes a video go viral like having a famous person ridiculing the Internet and viral videos and memes.  Jennifer Aniston is a pretty good sport during the whole thing - I would start…

Nothing makes a video go viral like having a famous person ridiculing the Internet and viral videos and memes.  Jennifer Aniston is a pretty good sport during the whole thing - I would start…

Recently, another blogger reviewed Vaccine Epidemic. The blogger's emphasis was on this quote taken from Allen Tate's chapter, "The Greater Good": "It is indisputable that the vaccination…

Infinite Growth And The Crisis Cocktail - a guest article Infinite growth is not possible in any real-world context, yet many otherwise rational people behave - economically speaking - as if they…

Upon expressing the Higgs potential in terms of the field H0, we find The first term in V is a constant energy density which can be interpreted as a contribution to the vacuum energy, Although the…

Despite what you may guess by mass media coverage, the priorities of Americans are not global warming or wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but are instead just what they were in 1990; health care and a…

The body's ability to break down medicines may be closely related to exposure to sunlight, according to a study from the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet.   This could mean…

The deadly Russian heat wave of 2010 was due to a natural atmospheric phenomenon often associated with weather extremes, according to a new study accepted for publication in Geophysical Research…

Regulatory DNA changes have made a huge impact on the evolution of human-specific traits.  A study in the latest issue of Nature covers not just the usual stuff, like what has been added in…

There’s a phrase given to us by the venerable computer game called Adventure, which fits many situations. The game, in which one explores caverns, searches for treasures, and solves puzzles to obtain…

It is impossible today to get a 'treaty' ratified that would cause America to obey CO2 limits set by any outside body, for a number of reasons.  So Democrats in Congress have been trying to make…

As a member of the  "Jaws" generation I have mixed feelings about a story I read this morning detailing the plight of the severely endangered great white shark. Oh I'm not talking about the…

This from the BBC: “Germany has been named as the most supportive country for overseas students, in an international league table.” If you are a student looking for international experience, you…

Superfluid liquid Helium is shot under very high pressure out of a tiny nozzle and into vacuum. Outside in front of the nozzle, the excess pressure bursts the liquid apart violently into a myriad of…

A new study in Proceedings of the Royal Society B says it is the first to demonstrate that birds possess empathy - and they say they have verified it using both behavioral and physiological methods…