A science historian at The University of Manchester says he has cracked 'The Plato Code', secret messages purported to be hidden in the writings of history's most famous philosopher. Plato likely…

Men will sometimes blame hormones for how women act but it isn't just one gender - one thing that sets off hormone changes in men is competition, says a new PNAS study. The average man experiences…

Researchers at Harvard and MIT using what is called programmable matter have demonstrated how a single thin sheet composed of interconnected triangular sections could transform itself into a boat- or…

Despite some of the more outrageous claims to the contrary, SecondLife, while an abstract 3-D world, is not actually a teaching platform.   It had its moment and devolved rather quickly into…

(updated - more formal, removed some parts and improved general clarity) Over years, I come again and again back to Halting Problem and it's unsolvability ..now I have created a system, which is…

I introduce the term "topological identity of computer programs" and show it in relation to halting problem and similar problems - what we need to detect in code to suspect it? I think that…

Inhibition in the brain seems simple but there is an underlying complexity that makes it one of the most challenging aspects of brain function to understand.   Its kind of like soccer, it…

Frustrated in dealing with the public?   You are not alone.   It may seem to researchers that the public is either stupid or intentionally ignoring evidence but it's not that one-sided,…

Aschner and Ceccatelli (2010) review the relevant data for thimerosal as a cause of autism. They conclude there is "no reliable data indicating that administration of vaccines containing thimerosal…

A subtle rainy morning of June sets in with enduring smell of the soil waking me up. A life of a scientist does not begin with a cup of coffee, but with engaging emails. Just back from a hectic work…

Metric mania Which country does not belong in the following list: Burma, Liberia, Somalia, United States? OK, that was not too difficult. As astute Scientific Blogging reader you got that right.…

Remote access ... for lab equipment?     Labshare Australia wants to create a shared network of remote laboratories.  Yep, with costs going up - and science and hospitals are two…

Post-Holocaust Noble Savages I’ve read three 1952 post-apocalyptic novels for this series - The Long Loud Silence, and two books that are so similar that they can be dealt with in a single post: Star…

With an increasing trend toward what marketing groups call 'natural' food, some companies have reduced preservatives.  A common preservative, acetic acid, is used to stop bacterial growth in…

Using two of the world’s largest telescopes, the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile and the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) on La Palma in the Canary Islands, an international team of astronomers…

Retinitis pigmentosa are a diverse group of hereditary diseases that lead to incurable blindness and affect two million people worldwide. Though the causes are diverse, the manifestation of the…

Imagine you wanted to predict when sheep would chew. (Don't ask why...just imagine.) Here's how you would do it: attach speakers to the tops of sheep heads to broadcast chewing sounds. Collect…

Let's say we have 1D cellular automata, bounded at beginning. The following is solution for halting problem - mathematically unproven, somewhat open here and there, but basically very near to what I…

This is what your next doctor's visit will sound like after you get your genome sequenced: "Analysis of 2·6 million single nucleotide polymorphisms and 752 copy number variations showed increased…

I have gotten the dig dates, which will be the last two weeks in July,  and we have the students we'll be working with all signed up. They appear to be a great group of kids, I honestly can't…