CERN owes its historic aversion to patenting to its 20 European member states, says spokesman James Gillies. They pump millions of euros into the organisation every year to help develop new…

A Labor Day special: I am offering you to have a short virtual tour of the CDF Control Room today, free of charge. I am currently on shift there, and we are taking data. If you send me an email with…

One of the most common forms of self-medication in capitalist societies surely has to be retail therapy.  Is there really a problem that can't be solved by a new pair of shoes, or the latest…

I have railed against this particular form of lawn care hokum ever since I first heard about it, but I think I might have narrowed down it's origin. The story goes like this. Rumors float around the…

A Special Guest Post by Richard ("Dick") Flatman "I call our world Flatland,not because we call it so, but to make its nature clearer to you, my happy readers, who are privileged to live in Space."…

Coincidences in physics and in a sense infinite coincidences in mathematics are coincidences also because of the contingency around them: It could have been different. There is this type of…

Psychotropic medications -  psychostimulants like Ritalin,  antidepressants like Prozac and antipsychotics like Haldol - during pregnancy increase the probability of birth defects,…

While proponents of organic farming insist it can meet population projections and is better for wildlife, scientists at the Universities of Leeds and York say instead a balanced approach is superior.…

The Greenland and West Antarctic ice caps are melting at half the speed previously predicted, shows a team from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Delft University of Technology (TU Delft, The…

A research team says they have discovered one of the key drivers of human evolution and diversity, accounting for changes that occur between different generations of people. Professor Alec Jeffreys,…

As mentioned, I had a chance to break some bread with uber-Geek book author Garth Sundem a few days back and posted a Bloggy pic.   But, as is common, we took more than one to try and get it…

British newspapers have always been more contrarian than US ones when it came to global warming coverage.   One skeptic thinks the damaging IAC report last week didn't go far enough. A report on…

British newspapers have always been more contrarian than US ones when it came to global warming coverage.   One skeptic thinks the damaging IAC report last week didn't go far enough. A report on…

"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation." Oscar Wilde

Nuclear waste is one of the biggest downsides to nuclear power, and can remain dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years.  Geological disposal is often stated as the most preferable way of…

The publishers of Make: Magazine have announced that September 2010 is officially "Citizen Science" month. They are looking for citizen scientists to submit their projects, research, and…

It would seem that mimicking nature would be among the easiest things to do for science.  After all, it's right there, in front of us, happening for millions of years. Take plants, for…

Most fashion students keep finished designs in a wardrobe but Emily Crane has to use a freezer.   Unlike the stereotypical fashion designer, Crane is more likely to be found in a lab coat and…

The sharing, preservation and reuse of data has become an increasingly important element of modern scientific research, but even though granting agencies like the National Science Foundation (NSF)…

One of the things that I learnt from my father, who was a chemical engineer, is that halide ions are aggressive towards metals, and steels in particular.  Now bleaches contain a lot of chloride…