Why You Should Read Terms and Conditions It seems that most people don't read the T&Cs before they click through to sign up at websites. The news item below is worth reading as a stark, dark and…

Some Notes On Data Smoothing The topic of data filtering can be pretty obscure for the general public.  Taking raw data and smoothing out the lumps can seem like deliberate falsification. …

This is to inform you of the new luminosity record set today by the Tevatron collider at Fermilab. The machine has been working excellently, improving its performance as the machinists found ways to…

Well Done, My Old China In London, U.K. 'my old china' is a friendly term for 'friend'.  It originated in the rhyming slang expression: 'china plate', rhyming with 'mate'. Edit: a reader has…

With little fanfare, NASA released on online simulation of spacewalking, the ISS, and real science in space.  Real physics, real challenges, no sissified arcade-y action or twitch gaming. …

In Writing As Superpower we discussed that writing is really for the eye, at the expense of the hands, despite the fact that our brains may have evolved to comprehend speech.  We still prefer to…

Blythe Corbett’s insights may be unique among researchers developing new interventions for children with autism spectrum disorders – at the M.I.N.D. Institute or elsewhere. Corbett’s Social Emotional…

Arctic Tipping Points - #1: Background And Recent History It is Spring, and with each passing day a greater area of Arctic sea ice has 24 hours of - albeit weak - sunshine every day. It is not…

The Russian TV channel STS has recently shown all movies about Rambo. I like the films and Stallone despite of the fact that Rambo, in the 3rd movie, kills Soviet soldiers and officers in…

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1002/1002.3425v1.pdf   We should depart from notion of a continuously existing electron and consider an elementary particle an ensemble of events connected…

The world's water cycle has already intensified and the changes are consistent with predictions made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, according to  new research in the Journal…

The eruption of the Icelandic Eyjafjallajokull volcano that sent a huge plume of ash into the atmosphere is unlikely to have a global impact and will probably dissipate in the next several days,…

The next generation of doctors and other health professionals does not like fat people. In fact, they like fat people even less than the rest of the population, according to a study published in…

A new British Medical Journal editorial claims that banning trans fats would protect the public and save lives by preventing thousands of heart attacks and deaths every year. The policy…

Electronic readers allow children to interact with texts in ways they don't interact with the printed word, encouraging them to read, according to Kansas State University professor of Education Lotta…

On Easter Sunday, April 15th in 1990, I was visiting a church near my home in Penn Hills, PA.  A lady in Sunday School asked the pastor “How can I teach my teen-aged children about Adam&Eve…

I read with interest and excitement a very lightweight preprint on the Cornell preprint arxiv this afternoon. Although I usually skip reading papers on subjects I know little about (Cosmology), the…

Synchrotron Radiation Synchrotron radiation is a kind of electromagnetic radiation caused by the high energy particles (with a velocity close to the speed of light). Radiation is very common in…

Thank goodness Bruce Willis is around, or the Midwest would have been a smoking crater this morning! Authorities in several Midwestern states were flooded Wednesday night with reports of a gigantic…

Volcano in Iceland Grounds UK Flights Edit: for latest updates please see comments, below. A volcanic ash cloud in UK airspace has left tens of thousands of travellers returning from Easter holidays…