One of the biggest mistakes environmentally conscious people make is thinking that an 'organic' pesticide is somehow superior to an inorganic one.   The word 'organic' may be the most…

In discussing individualism and collectivism it needs to be clear that this represents overall philosophical perspectives that aren't confined to simple economic or political interpretations. …

"We would dig a shaft near 'ground zero' about 10 feet in diameter and about 150 feet deep. We would put a tank, 10 feet in diameter and 75 feet long on end at the bottom of the shaft. We would then…

Google “E=mc2 is wrong” and you get 1,060 hits. Google “E=mc2 is correct” and you get a mere 138 hits. There you have it. It took us a more than a century, but finally this crazy inconsistent theory…

Planetary nebulae are gas and dust shells ejected by stars near the end of their lives - typically seen around stars comparable or smaller in size than the Sun. The existing population of planetary…

The UK Government, in its Digital Britain report in June, made a commitment that every home in the UK should have broadband access by 2012. A range of technologies, including wireless, will be used…

The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) is a twin-satellite system to study in detail the Earth's gravity field. The GRACE data consist of  accelerometer, GPS, and…

The World Conference on Science Journalism held in London 2009 has its own web site, of course. Today they were so kind to let me know they had published there the recordings of all sessions, among…

I'm in the midst of 2 proposals right now (one satellite, one book), so I decided to take a break to share two web cartoons about science.  One is from Cowbirds in Love, the other from Abstruse…

Some people might be encouraged by all of the science being done. I find it depressing. Since I started grad school (back in 2000), the number of papers in my current field (cell cycle) has doubled:…

A new era in painkillers has officially started, as FDA approved King Pharmaceuticals' extended-release morphine drug Embeda. This is a story that has been several months in the making, and the…

Observation is the generative act in scientific discovery. For all its aberrations, the evidence of the senses is essentially to be relied upon--provided we observe nature as a child does, without…

The knock on drastic global warming mitigation solutions by detractors is that it may end up being expensive and not accomplish much - the classic government scenario. 'Cash for Clunkers' is an…

Air conditioning technology hasn't changed much in the last 50 years and though different climates have different optimal air conditioning requirements, economies of scale force companies into a one…

Small bursts of heat and energy called nanoflares cause temperatures in the sun's atmosphere to reach millions of degrees, according to NASA researchers.. The sun's outer atmosphere, or corona, is…

A Dresden research team using laser tweezers  measured the friction between a single motor protein molecule and its track and say that within our cells, motors work against the resistance of…

A new mathematical model  could significantly improve the automatic recognition and processing of spoken language, meaning algorithms which imitate brain mechanisms could help machines to…

Members of sexual minorities are almost twice as likely as heterosexuals to seek help for mental health issues or substance abuse treatment.  48.5% of lesbian/gay/bisexual individuals reported…

Michael Massing at The NY Review of Books weighs in on the future of news organizations in the era of blogs: The practice of journalism, far from being leeched by the Web, is being reinvented there,…

A couple of months ago I wrote here about the first observation of a process called "diboson production", a quite rare occurrence in hadronic collisions: for the first time, the CDF collaboration…