Here’s why you don’t kill the spider… why should you?The typical, first answer is that it bites.Or that it’s creepy.Or that it will crawl into your mouth at night… um… well – first things first.…

How to sell a broken hockey stick If there exists a scientist who can prove to the satisfaction of the world's leaders that global warming - anthropogenic or not - is a myth, he or she will get a…

The Linguistics of Computer Science As somebody with more than a passing knowledge of computer science and linguistics, I thought I would share a few insights into the deeper meanings of some common…

Life can be brutal for yeast in the wild. You don't know where your next meal is coming from or what form it's going to take. The key to being a successful yeast is to be metabolically agile, able to…

NHS Should Cease Funding Homeopathic Medicine - Cross-Party Group On 2nd Feb 2010 I asked Is Homeopathy Good For The British Economy? In a reductio ad absurdum I concluded that if homeopathy works,…

For those who have not entered the world of Twitter, it is hard to fathom why people feel compelled to stream their lives to strangers 140 characters at a time. And such non-Twitter folk are also…

UCL (University College London) scientists studying face recognition in identical twins say the essential skill is largely determined by our genetics. Published today in the Proceedings of the…

Writing in the Proceedings of The National Academy of Sciences, Harvard University researchers say they have demonstrated that simple changes in beak length and depth can explain the important…

New research from the University of California, Berkeley, suggest that a biphasic sleep schedule, sleeping several times a day, not only refreshes the mind, but can also make us smarter. Conversely,…

Scientists from the University of Washington sent to collect seismic data and evaluate damage from the devastating magnitude-7 earthquake that struck Haiti have recently released a report documenting…

In recent years, DNA evidence has added important new tools for scientists studying the human past, and a collection of reviews published in a recent issue of Current Biology offers a timely update…

University of Pittsburgh researchers say they have taken a significant step toward unraveling the brain activity that drives adolescents to engage in impulsive, self-indulgent, or self-destructive…

The United States Geological Survey (USGS) reports that ice shelves are retreating in the southern section of the Antarctic Peninsula due to climate change. The disappearing ice could lead to sea…

A new RNA molecule created by University of Colorado scientists can catalyze a key reaction needed to synthesize proteins. The discovery may have significant implications, researchers say, because it…

Archaeological excavations conducted by researchers at Hebrew University of Jerusalem have revealed a section of an ancient city wall of Jerusalem possibly built by King Solomon during the tenth…

A new study by researchers at Indiana University suggests that there may be a link between the number of 'alcohol sales sites' in a neighborhood and the amount of violence that neighborhood…

Groundbreaking ideas spring most from companies that stress technology, rather than customer needs or staying ahead of competitors, according to research that will appear in the Journal of Product…

Day two and day one if you need to catch up. One great thing about being at a conference on a press pass is people want to buy you food. You can literally go the entire day without buying anything…

Getting More Bang Per Buck In The Steam Age Once the physics of steam engines began to be understood, engineers were able to focus their minds on how to get more power for the same fuel, or the same…

There are twenty-four elementary fermions in the standard model. Sure, they are arranged in a very tidy, symmetrical structure of three families of eight fermions (two leptons and six quarks), which…