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…

It takes me a long time to write an article, and I’ve started working on one.  Too much in one day, though, and I find that Cerebrum meum est fatiga-tum.So for the meantime I will show you…

Can't make it to the H+ Summit because you're in South Africa for the World Cup?   The folks at the H+ "Rise of the Citizen-Scientist" summit have it covered. Take Scientific Blogging Featured…

BP, GIS and The Mysterious Vanishing Open Letter Subject: BP control of GIS data Regarding the loss of an open letter from the web, from whatever cause. [EDIT]June 15 2010 - 00:23 BST. Important…

The nation's second attempt to launch its first space rocket has failed. Minister of Education, Science and Technology Ahn Byung-man announced in a briefing on Thursday that the Naro space rocket…

What I don't understand is why the Former States of the Soviet Union need Russia in their affairs.  They would be much better off working together, considering that they share a language. …

I just arrived at the Harvard Science Center for a day of collaboration about the future. This should be an exciting day! Follow me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/neurotechfuture

Today is a good day: I can rest in peace without working out my daily share of science popularization here, because I have something better to do, which will have a much more sizable positive effect…

If you're thirsty and you drink, your brain feels pleasure. You feel this same pleasure, borne of satisfying a physical need, when someone you envy is brought low. We call this feeling schadenfreude,…

If you take a look at a marimba, a marimba has different tones in each pad.  Also, when you hit its volume and timber is slightly differently, in a concave design that is uneven to prevent…