Databases are tough.   Unless you want to spend a million dollars on Oracle you are stuck with sporadic performance, testy optimization and occasional baffling behavior over a product you didn't…

Humboldt squid: news when you see 'em, news when you don't. Now, the mystery deepens: It seems the Humboldt squid, the locusts of the ocean, have vanished from the Pacific north of California this…

When I was a lad (a little bit later than when Sarahsaurus was around), there was a common misunderstanding among schoolboys that methane was responsible for the foul smell of flatulence.  A…

In July, the remains of a wooden ship were unearthed at the World Trade Center construction site.  Since then, researchers have sought clues as to why 'the Ground Zero ship' was there and…

In July, the remains of a wooden ship were unearthed at the World Trade Center construction site.  Since then, researchers have sought clues as to why 'the Ground Zero ship' was there and…

I had no idea there were entire languages left to discover.   Then again, I had no idea there was a group called the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages either, but exist they both…

If you want something done right, do it yourself. Or, if you're tired of waiting for someone else to do it, give it the ol' college try yourself. So saith two local governments, anyway. Two unrelated…

Some of the most pressing questions in science aren't how to better treat cancer or solve global warming, they're instead practical things like why a stranger on the Internet takes you off of a…

Temple psychologist Ingrid Olson, who dedicates her research to understanding human memory,  has found a way to improve the recall of proper names - electricity.Electric stimulation of the…

Science comedian Brian Malow ties much of science to growing up in a happily dysfunctional family. He asks: What if the driving force behind the evolutionary patterns of homo erectus was moms telling…

Since China becomes ever more important also for academia and science, here insights into difficulties that are not widely mentioned. I started with the language barrier, and there were points that…

NPR, National Public Radio, is in a tough spot - they are constantly accused of liberal bias (and, let's be honest, they have never done a story on how taxes hurt poor people or how much better the…

New research by archaeologists from the University of York says that Neanderthals were a lot more compassionate than their reputation as brutish cavemen. How do you chart the 'compassion' of early…

Reflections on the Nexus of Science and Medical Education and Medical Education on the 100th Anniversary of the Flexner Revolution. How Much Basic Science Does a Clinician Need to Know?How much basic…

More bad news for the Argentine shortfin squid--this is the same fishery that crashed in Argentina last year. The deep sea fishing business in Taiwan is facing a crisis because of precipitous drops…

Richard F. Heck, Ei-ichi Negishi and Akira Suzuki have won 2010 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for  developing new, more efficient ways of linking carbon atoms together to build the complex molecules…

Obviously some things about the Sun's relationship to Earth are known - if we get too close or too far away all life disappears.  But other aspects, like the activity of the Sun related to…

Is a 52% chance of winning a prediction?   Well, yes and no. Today begins the Major League Baseball Division Series and New Jersey Institute of Technology associate math professor Bruce Bukiet…

Evolutionary detectives have used century-old bits of DNA from museum specimens to find a place for the extinct passenger pigeon, Ectopistes migratorius, in the family tree of pigeons and doves,…

New research is challenging the belief that the planet Neptune knocked a collection of planetoids known as the Cold Classical Kuiper Belt to its current location at the edge of the solar system. The…