If you want to solve big network security problems, sometimes it pays to think small - as in ants. A concept called 'swarm intelligence' adapts quickly to changing threats and it uses 'digital ants'…

No matter what their profession, all the letter writers behaved the same way. They adhered to a circadian cycle; they tended to write a number of letters at one sitting, which is more efficient; and…

You may feel like you're not in the same league as Albert Einstein or Charles Darwin (note: statistically, you are not)  but you probably share one thing if you are reading this article;…

The NIH has made public how often they fund grants below the payline. 18% of R01s scored below the nominal cutoff get funded anyway. A good chunk of those are grants from new investigators. This is…

Very sound advice from systems biologist Uri Alon: A common mistake made in choosing problems is taking the first problem that comes to mind. Since a typical project takes years even it if seems…

A biopharma is hoping to add to the deluge of drugs by the end of this year, but in virgin territory for the pharma industry. A new orphan indication? A disease that has previously been ignored? Nope…

Isolated hamlet in Indian forest gets electricity from seed-powered generator Deep in the tropical forests of southern India, the Kolam people were untouched by telephones, cars or television, and…

Biofuels with special reference to ecological impacts of biofuel cultivation Why Bio Diesel ? Many alternative Bio Diesel fuels have been shown to have better exhaust emissions than traditional…

On Tuesday, BBC News' Day In Pictures included a photo of a northern bottlenose whale, washed up dead on a beach in Southern England. (The bottlenose whale is a member of the beaked whale family,…

Well, now we know that spanking results in lower IQs for children than those that aren't spanked.  Of course, maybe once we figure out what IQ really means (if anything) this study might…

VEGETATION The vegetation of the area has been classified as “scrub jungle”. Plants which can either adapt themselves to high temperatures or to low temperatures and discouraging conditions of soil…

Well, it seems that someone has finally decided that with all this talk of "end-times" and the "rapture" it was important that we have a more scientific approach to determining how close we actually…

On important occasions, when man feels that his efforts and work are enough to bring forth result, he begins to depend on good and bad omens and oracles and totems Anonymous (1959). To get leaves…

I'm not one of the more fundamentalist types in the broad science community who had any issue with Francis Collins leading the NIH.   His credentials are impeccable and the same people who were…

Do you really care about the human race ? I do, and probably I do more than you do. Well, not more than you, maybe -I do not know you personally!-; but I know where you come from: the class of human…

A commenter on a previous post seems to have objected to the claim that evolutionary science makes predictions. gimme 5 examples of predictions, i mean real predictions: not fit the model hogwash…

Today I gave my lecture on mammal diversity and evolution in the 4th year vertebrate course. We have been talking a fair bit about paraphyletic groups, common vs. scientific names, and so on. Within…

This is too funny. A website called Kill or Cure? has been compiling links to science stories in The Daily Mail (UK) and their apparent "ongoing effort to classify every inanimate object into those…

Just came across this nice video by C0nc0rdance summarizing the work of Susumu Ohno and the original concept of junk DNA. (Oh, and it gets bonus points for using one of my figures!)

Does an ideal marriage exist?   Before we start this discussion, we ought to, as a beginning, ask ourselves: What is an 'ideal marriage'?   Presumably an 'ideal marriage' is one where there…