Himalayan Hype : Reading Between The Lines A recent IPCC news release admitting a small instance of bad science has triggered a flurry of news stories and blog articles based on worse science. …

Production of recombinant proteins in plants for pharmaceutical use   Preťová Anna, Klubicová Katarína, Obert Bohuš   Institute of Plant Genetics and Biotechnology, Slovak Academy of…

Epidemiological studies indicate that obesity comes with an increased risk of developing cancer, and especially certain types such as liver cancer. Now, a group of researchers reporting in Cell say…

2009 was tied for the second warmest year on record, and in the Southern Hemisphere, last year was the warmest on record, according to a new analysis of global surface temperatures by NASA scientists…

How does an outfielder get to the right place at the right time to catch a fly ball? According to a recent article in the Journal of Vision, the "outfielder problem" represents the definitive…

The presumption that children need both a mother and a father may be readily accepted by many people today, but there is little evidence to support the idea, say sociologists from USC and NYU. In a…

What does it take to stop a deadly bioterrorism attack? A strong military? Secured borders? Good Political leaders? If you chose any of the above, you're wrong. The answer is actually llamas--or…

The natural climate archives recorded in a stalagmite from a limestone cave in southern Arizona link the Southwest's winter precipitation to temperatures in the North Atlantic, according to new…

As people age, they gradually lose their ability to filter out irrelevant information. But that may actually give aging adults a memory advantage over their younger counterparts, according to a new…

Some animal-pollinated plants face an interesting dilemma. The same animals they rely on for pollination also like to eat them. This is the case for Nicotiana attenuata, a wild tobacco plant that…

Young people are all for saving the environment--as long as doing so makes economic sense, according to new research conducted at Michigan State University. Based on a survey of 18- to 30-year-olds,…

Viruses are thought to spread by entering a cell, replicating, and then moving on to infect new cells. But a new study published in Science reveals that some viruses spread much faster than…

It's strange how quickly the image conjured up of a place can change so quickly for so many. If I'd used "Haiti" in the subject line two weeks ago, I'd guess most of you wouldn't quickly think of how…

Wednesday 6 January 2010 There have been only two standing ovations at the AAS in his memory, said Society president John Huchra, and the other heralded a presenter who later won the Nobel Prize.…

Nature has put up some free pieces on syntehtic and systems biology on their Synthetic Systems Biology Web Focus. Unfortunately they haven't made it all free, but you can go read this one: Five hard…

Can The UK Met Office Weather The BBC Contract Storm? The UK's Met Office could lose its contract with the BBC, according to recent media reports. To the general public there is no difference between…

University of Iowa (UI) astronomers have made the first clear, rainbow-like, radio telescope images of a distant stellar coronal loop, at the eclipsing, non-nova binary star Algol, found in the…

  Why We Must Abandon The  Concept That There Exists A ‘One Real Image’ Of Any Observed Object.     Ayad bin Izzet   January 20, 2010 – Damascus, Syria      …

  Why We Must Abandon The  Concept That There Exists A ‘One Real Image’ Of Any Observed Object.     Ayad bin Izzet   January 20, 2010 – Damascus, Syria      …

Recently, I came across an article in “The Times”, “Why non-scientists are a pain in the arts” by Ben Miller, presumably the physicist turned comedian, going back to his science…