Lutetia is a large, primitive asteroid left on the shelf for billions of years, presumably because no planet consumed it as the Solar System formed.  Most measurements affirm this, making the…

Gardiner and Kosmitzki (2008) acknowledge their use of Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model as the basis for the coverage of human development from a cultural perspective. It is the first theory that I…

Advocates of good science breathed a sigh of relief when Andrew Wakefield was finally lambasted for questionable methods and shoddy science, basically eliminating the validity of the fundamental text…

Understanding Depression I suffer from depression.  One day I may write more fully about how it affects me, and how I cope.  But not just yet. If you have never suffered from depression…

1. It's probably a good thing Avogadro wasn't around after the telephone was invented. I bet he'd get real sick of this... 2. Also see: Josh Witten. 3. Seriously, who f'ing cares?? 4. Too bad BP…

Science 2.0 And Deepwater Horizon In this age of rapid communication via the internet we have a golden opportunity to engage in synergy on a global scale to solve problems in science and engineering.…

Rules for writing can vary from basic grammar principles to austere proverbs like Hemingway's "Write what you know!" In my previous article, I listed the first 12 rules of prose as delineated by…

In vitro fertilization (IVF) resulted in the first 'test tube baby' in 1978 and now an estimated 1% of all American babies born each year has happened thanks to in vitro fertilization - wonderful for…

Our 1950 pick is L. Sprague de Camp and P. Schuyler Miller's Genus Homo, a pulp adventure that takes place a million years in the future after after the genus Homo has destroyed itself, leaving the…

Hi, my name is Georgie and I’m a dog with a blog.As we approach the summer solstice of 2010 I thought I should start a blog as a countdown to the end of the world.  Ok, the world is not really…

Little nuggets of (k)nowledge can often be the most simple and common sense ideas, but it takes someone else to put them into a coherent sentence. Tim Radford is a freelance journalist who has…

With the press of a button, yesterday Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands activated LOFAR and started the recording of its first official image. LOFAR (LOw Frequency ARray) is by all standards a big…

When I was a young guy in the Army, if an M-16 stayed missing the President had to know about it within 4 hours(1) and that was just a gun ... imagine how much Pres. Obama wants to know whose ass to…

Today, for the first time in 18 years of association to the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN), I leave for a trip abroad, to the CERN laboratories, on my own wallet. The situation…

Some of the  earliest  plants which evolved to bear seeds   Gymnosperms ( like cycads) did not have their ovules covered in the ovary.  They called it naked ovules.…

Polar science will continue to have a global impact, whether you believe in man-made climate change or not, says an expert. Global warming was always an unfortunate use of 'framing' by policy…

Galaxy M51, now called the Whirlpool Galaxy, was discovered by Charles Messier in 1773 but its spiral structure was first found by William Parsons in 1845, using his huge (and wonderfully named)…

Each day the humans are confronted with a variety of pathogens. Most of them are fended off by our immune system.  For a successful infection, bacteria must deliver so-called virulence factors…

Today kicked off the 2010 H+ Summit, "The Rise of the Citizen Scientist". You can watch the livestream here. I'll blog about it tomorrow, after I get some sleep! No one wants to read what I have to…

I think that there is an innate (somewhat mindblind) tendency to assume that other people think, feel, react the same way we do. Americans are often egocentric. We think that our way is the best way…