A clinical report in the current edition of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International supports the belief that the designer drug “Spice Gold” is strongly addictive.   Ulrich S. Zimmermann from Dresden…

A team of astrophysicists say they have solved a mystery that led some scientists to speculate that the distribution of certain gamma rays in our Milky Way galaxy was evidence for undetectable 'dark…

Johann Galle fans won't like reading this but professor David Jamieson, Head of the School of Physics at the University of Melbourne, says Galileo beat him to the punch in the discovery of Neptune -…

lol. Once a oil man always a oil man. T.B. Pickens pulls the plug on his windmill scheme now supporting drilling for natural gas and oil. With over a million supporters of his energy plan based on…

Medical doctors often like to characterize themselves as scientists, and many others in the public are happy to join them in this. I submit, however, that such a characterization is an error. It is…

The NY Times recently criticized cancer funding policies as being too risk-averse. The Director of the National Cancer Institute has responded, but his response helps prove the point that funding is…

Eggs are sexy. They can be safer to eat according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). What was announced on 7 July 2009 is the final rule requiring specific preventive…

A gene called Chd1 has been identified in a Nature study as crucial for embryonic stem cell pluripotency - the ability to differentiate into any type of cell.  Chd1 seems to act by keeping the…

Photo Shoots that Should Never Be Done I'm sure I'm not the first to blog about this, but while I was out of the loop for a few days, someone made another hopeless attempt to make nerds look cool:…

I'm a G-protein coupled receptor (GPCR) fan, and all of you should be too. Most drugs, from pot to tylenol, act on G-protein Coupled Receptors. The pharmaceutical industry would be helpless without…

Twitter, the newest social networking sensation, can generate sales leads for your business faster than other social network, even with a slashed budget, says David White, Founder and Chief Executive…

After a big kerfuffle in March over whether a researcher violated a confidentiality agreement with JAMA, the journal has eased off a bit with an editorial laying out the new policy for reporting…

Today, July 8th, a fun little phenomenon happens - the numbers 7 through 12 all line up thanks to our Western calendar and time. At 10:11 am and 12 seconds today, it will be: July 8, 2009, 10:11:12 -…

The Arxiv is an online repository of scientific papers in physics, astronomy, maths, cosmology, computer science, and a few other topics, where papers due to be published on scientific journals are…

This is my course assignment of Evolutionary Ecology of Stockholm University,Sweden in the year of 2009. Abstract Specialization character of phytophagous insects is one of the key examples of insect…

Scientists have discovered the gene behind Recessive Omodysplasia, a rare skeletal disease characterised by short-limbed dwarfism and craniofacial anomalies. The work, just published in the American…

In 1981 Robert Axelrod and Bill Hamilton published a paper titled The Evolution of Cooperation in which they analyzed game theory as a means of explaining the emergence of cooperative behaviour. In…

Nothing makes biologists happier than psychologists declaring things a product of evolution.   Now it turns out even social constructs like 'taking turns' have gotten some benefit from…

If you've read your history and wondered about when the next Ice Age is coming, you can thank global warming it hasn't happened.    But it could be worse.   Earth's 4.5 billion years…

The news that Newcastle University researchers have used embryonic stem cells to create human sperm under laboratory conditions has led to a lot of questions; like, who will television commercials…