Researchers have discovered a genetic variant that allows a fish in the Hudson River to live in waters heavily polluted by polychlorinated biphenyls - PCBs. In their report,  they show that a…

After 50 years, laser technology is still advancing.  Scientists at Yale University have announced  the world's first anti-laser, in which incoming beams of light interfere with one another…

Sometimes good things result from bad things.  When scientists drilling near an Icelandic volcano hit magma, they had to abandon their experiments on geothermal energy but it turns out they may…

The skeletal hormone osteocalcin also, boosts testosterone production to support the survival of the germ cells that go on to become mature sperm, say researchers writing in Cell. Bone was once…

In physics, it is sometimes the case that the act of observation changes the thing being observed.  While it isn't that extreme in biology, a study in PLoS One may mean a genome biologists think…

In physics, it is sometimes the case that the act of observation changes the thing being observed.  While it isn't that extreme in biology, a study in PLoS One may mean a genome biologists think…

They were researching stress, but we might be able to add 'cured baldness' to the list of unexpected discoveries found using basic research. As they wrote in PLoS One, a team led by researchers…

They were researching stress, but we might be able to add 'cured baldness' to the list of unexpected discoveries found using basic research. As they wrote in PLoS One, a team led by researchers…

Results of a survey in Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy titled "How Much Is Enough? Examining the Public’s Beliefs About Consumption" showed no huge surprise, people think we should…

The following segments were written one per day, as I watched the three days of IBM’s Watson computer play Jeopardy!. I’ll post my notes here now, for the three or four people who haven’t already…

Time flows. Newton seemed to think so. So did Aristotle and countless others before. Even the Buddhists, with their cyclic time, kept believing that time was something which went from one instant to…

Yesterday I wrote about journalist and science blogger Ed Yong's unfortunate run-in with the kind of anachronistic journalism dinosaur that will be extinct one day soon - a PIO who resents blogging.…

After arguing against ‘higher consciousness’ or freedom evolving, let us go on to discuss consciousness inside computers. This is, maybe surprisingly so for some readers, closely connected with the…

You know how you sometimes can sense that something is present even though you can't see it? Well, astronomers are getting that feeling about a giant, hidden object in space.    Evidence is…

You know how you sometimes can sense that something is present even though you can't see it? Well, astronomers are getting that feeling about a giant, hidden object in space.    Evidence is…

This a double whammy, a two-for-the-price-of-one, a joint review (for some value of the word review) of two books with the same title: Kraken. China Miéville's Kraken is a New Weird novel that…

—A Critical Look at Recent Studies of Creativity and Insight— "All this fires in my soul, and—provided I am not disturbed—my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodized and defined, and in the whole,…

In the somewhat chronic angst over science understanding (more funding, more funding) one thing that gets lost is that it's really only 'fact-based' science, memorization, where American kids are…

OK, by now everyone's familiar with "Watson", the IBM Jeopardy machine with all the hype and drama associated with Artificial Intelligence and what it means for the future of humanity.  Is it…

Popular science writing today can be hit and miss. It can be truly awful; such as Brian Greene’s immensely dull Elegant Universe, Stephen Jay Gould’s idiosyncratically waffley Rocks of Ages, and…