Hummingbirds require an enormous amount of energy to beat their wings fast enough to hover and maneuver. In many ways they appear to retain  some of the flight patters of insects, but they have…

Before he was House on the TV series named ... "House" ... Hugh Laurie was a comedian; you know, one of those smug types UK people love, except he was actually funny.    In this clip, he…

Arctic Ice June 2010 This article describes the current state of the Arctic sea ice and makes some predictions for the month ahead.  The predictions are based on my visual analysis of hundreds…

3 Quarks Daily is a 'filter blog' that compiles stuff from around the web on a daily basis, in science, design, literature, current affairs, art, and anything else they deem inherently fascinating.…

The pheromone that attracts female mice to the odor of a particular male has been identified and named ‘darcin’ by researchers writing in BMC Biology (they say they named it after Darcy from Jane…

I recently finished the draft for my upcoming book, Harnessed: How Language and Music Mimicked Nature and Transformed Ape to Man (Benbella, 2011). To give you a better idea of it’s aim, here is the…

Occasionally, as a mother of three on the spectrum and an active autism-related blogger, I need a break from all things autism. Just as the psychology of religion is one of my areas of interest, so…

Given that the brain is something of a mystery, almost anything that works is worth doing, even if it ends up being the same as a placebo. Meditation is often linked to beneficial effects, though no…

Getting Steamed Up About Nostalgia The term nostalgia describes a yearning for the past. As a child, I would travel to school on a steam train.  I have always loved the power and the beauty of…

The Solenodon, 76-million-year-old badass of the natural world, must be saved So says Lucy Jones, the Telegraph's Culture Blogs Editor, who normally writes about popular culture and aesthetics,…

Joanne Chu, community moderator at Ranker.com, did such a terrific list of cutest animals impacted by the BP oil spill that rather than put up a link, which might only get a relatively small number…

Bbiomarkers of growth hormone doping are not subject to the same natural fluctuations as growth hormone itself, says a new study which could help sporting authorities worldwide catch athletes that…

"The Year Of (insert your favorite cause here)" is usually driven by marketing departments and often to correspond to some sort of milestone.   2009 was "The Year of..." both Galileo and Darwin,…

Mental retardation in autism is known to arise from a plethora of rare de novo mutations of key protein components in the synapse- the basic neuronal connection in the brain’s hardware. In a recent…

Just a quickie today, I may be working to turn the ionosphere into the world's biggest musical instrument, but a fellow named Tristan has done a music hack that makes any song swing. The Swinger is a…

It's pretty common to have a level of skepticism regarding modern athletes and performance-enhancing drugs.   A few users taint the entire field, especially if it brings some success.  …

Not even a week has passed since the announcement by Carlo Rubbia that the ICARUS experiment is collecting its first neutrino interactions, that another experiment at the Gran Sasso Laboratory claims…

A Global Warming Scam Exposed A favorite trick of scammers is to pick a phrase that is widely used and then use it to draw in site visits via Google searches for that phrase.1 If you search for…

When I did my master's degree, I split my areas of interest: my thesis and several projects leading up to it focused on a fairly complex intersection of how personality traits, explanatory style,…

Is there a link between aging of the brain and the neural defect that underlies Angelman Syndrome?  A new study suggests the answer is yes.   A surprising result that may help the…