Everyone says they want to get kids to get a better science - now we can all actually do something about it. We're doing a small beta test of our Science For Kids site.(1)  It isn't perfect yet…

Proving myself wrong in record time (see comments on my first post, where I claimed I wouldn't be discussing squid recipes), today's squid is served with chiles, lime, and herbs. Why? The coincidence…

I've been trying to figure out why "transhumanists" and their predictions irritate me so much.  Perhaps it's seeing humanity reduced to a simplistic engineering problem to be solved.  Or…

Ah, summer. Sunshine, lazy days, kids selling cocaine under the guise of lemonade on the sidewalk. Wait, what? Best excuse ever for ingesting pot: it was the mysterious sidewalk salesman working for…

What was it that my late aikido and Zen sensei asked me to do, on that day twenty-some years ago?  I do remember his request struck me as difficult to carry out, and perhaps not really…

 Piper longum Linn (Piperaceae) used in  Ayurvedic medicines helps cure leprosy.  Proessor Ashwani Kumar Habit and Habitat A climber occurring in the hotter parts of…

Antioxidants cause cancer. Or at least that is the headline you may read in some less reputable sources of science news, reporting this study out this week in Nature. Before you go rushing off to…

What's the quickest way to get scientists and serious science writers to quit coming on your show? Invite the creationists. Discover bloggers Sean Carroll and Carl Zimmer explain what happened: Sean…

A couple of years ago, I talked about some of the search terms that people have used when they’ve found my blog pages. In the comments, Donna was amazed at the information that’s available to the web…

 Cinnamomum verum Presl (  syn  C.zeylanicum Bi)     Lauraceae Famiily. Its bark is used as condiment.    A tree native  to Sri Lanka and  …

... Experiments unguided by an appropriate theoretical framework usually amount to little more than "watching the pot boil." - John Holland, "Complex Adaptive Systems", Daedalus 121:17-30 (1992)…

Saline water occupies 71% of the Earth area. It is thought that even a quarter of the whole pedosphere is affected by salts (Glenn and O’Leary, 1985), amounting to 950 x 106 ha (Flowers and Yeo, 1995…

      Ashwani Kumar Energy Plantation Demonstration project and Biotechnology Center Bio-Technology Lab Department of Botany University of Rajasthan, Jaipur - 302 004 E mail:…

         Ashwani Kumar  Energy Plantation Demonstration project and Biotechnology Center. Bio-Technology Lab Department of Botany University of Rajasthan,…

Stanford scientists say they will reinvent digital photography with the introduction of an 'open-source' digital camera. If the technology catches on, camera performance will be no longer be limited…

This is so cool! I can't believe I haven't been hearing taxonomists buzz about this. 3M Novec is a new engineered material that is non-flammable (unlike ethanol) non-toxic (unlike formalin, though…

Tangential Science: it's not necessarily science, but it's still funny. 1. Science of Karma  Can there be science to 'Karma'?   Likely not, since Karma is, by definition, an Eastern…

Idaho National Laboratory engineer Phillip West holds a curious metallic device about as wide as a steering wheel. It looks a bit like a flat, stoic face, with two large circular holes for eyes,…

Do you ever wonder how many harmful mutations you carry in your genome? Even if you've never worried about how much of a mutant you are, geneticists have spent a lot of time thinking about this issue…

Should early 20th century researcher Paul Kammerer be credited as the founder of epigenetics?   It would certainly be a dramatic change from current perceptions of his work. Kammerer, a leading…