It's been the decade of metamaterials, with breakthroughs toward an invisibility cloak occurring every few months.   With conventional materials, light typically travels along a straight…

Under certain conditions vapor bubbles can form in fluids moving swiftly over a surface and those bubbles soon collapse with such great force that they can even poke holes in steel and damage objects…

A year ago, you probably did not know what a vuvuzela was but, if you read this site during the World Cup, you know it now. Turns out so do a lot of other people.  The Global Language Monitor,…

A year ago, you probably did not know what a vuvuzela was but, if you read this site during the World Cup, you know it now. Turns out so do a lot of other people.  The Global Language Monitor,…

A Japanese physics team have turned theory into reality and, more importantly, information into energy.   By applying an electric field to a lattice of tiny plastic beads, they were able to…

A Japanese physics team have turned theory into reality and, more importantly, information into energy.   By applying an electric field to a lattice of tiny plastic beads, they were able to…

Are you willing to switch to an @Facebook.com e-mail address? Email wars, which have been dormant since the 1990s, appear to be back and social-networking behemoth Facebook is leading the charge.…

Are you willing to switch to an @Facebook.com e-mail address? Email wars, which have been dormant since the 1990s, appear to be back and social-networking behemoth Facebook is leading the charge.…

It's a funny title but the meaning is more serious; Surgical items, such as sponges and small instruments, left in the bodies of children who undergo surgery are uncommon and rarely fatal but…

It's a funny title but the meaning is more serious; Surgical items, such as sponges and small instruments, left in the bodies of children who undergo surgery are uncommon and rarely fatal but…

At Oddee, Gracie Murano has compiled 10 Bizarre Medical Discoveries, among them items like "asthma can be treated with a roller coaster ride" and coffee drinkers are more likely to have…

At Oddee, Gracie Murano has compiled 10 Bizarre Medical Discoveries, among them items like "asthma can be treated with a roller coaster ride" and coffee drinkers are more likely to have…

Warning! If you’re thinking this is going to be about gruesome punishments or such like, prepare to be disappointed! This is about teaching and learning electromagnetism. Having recently retired, I…

Facebook may have gotten metadata right, says Tyler Bell on O'Reilly Radar.   Facebook's OpenGraph Protocol is neither open nor a protocol but is an extremely straightforward and applicable…

Facebook may have gotten metadata right, says Tyler Bell on O'Reilly Radar.   Facebook's OpenGraph Protocol is neither open nor a protocol but is an extremely straightforward and applicable…

Phil Jones, head of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, had a life-changing event occur almost one year ago.   On November 19th, 2009, a thousand e-mail messages and…

Lee Smolin claims that AP is bad and favors a Cosmological Natural Selection view instead (on grounds of falsifiability).  I believe this is a false dichotomy and that they are really…

I liken cognition to a hill-climbing search on the landscape of theories/models/maps that explain/predict reality.  It’s easy to get stuck on peaks of local maximality.  Injecting…

Will kids be inspired by a talking proton?   A filmmaker is betting on it.   Using as a plot an effort to destroy the Cassini-Huygens antenna, writer/director Harry Kloor in Quantum…

Will kids be inspired by a talking proton?   A filmmaker is betting on it.   Using as a plot an effort to destroy the Cassini-Huygens antenna, writer/director Harry Kloor in Quantum…