The Art Of Torture More than 28 million Americans, and many more people throughout the world, suffer from migraine headaches, one of the most debilitating of pain disorders. Symptoms like…

A study published in the Lancet suggests that the number of children under 15 years of age with type 1 diabetes will rise to 160,000 in Europe by 2020, a relative increase of 70 percent from…

On the drive home yesterday afternoon I heard a fascinating story on NPR about an ecosystem near and dear to all humans - our skin. Even if bacteria aren't your thing, the story and the findings…

Scientists in Portugal and France managed to follow the patterns of gene expression in food-poisoning bacteria Listeria monocytogenes (L. monocytogenes) live during infection for the first time. The…

More than a 100 groups of mammals have been found in the early Miocene (37 – 20 mya) John Day Formation that underlies the Mascall near Kimberly, north central Oregon. I'm planning a field trip this…

Rarely does a scientific hypothesis - at least, not a useful or an interesting one - admit of a straightforward up-or-down, yes-or-no verdict. Valuable hypotheses survive the test of time in…

The "new" section of experimental physics papers in the arxiv today features a preprint by the CDF collaboration, titled "First Observation of Vector Boson Pairs in a Hadronic Final State at the…

Like ethanol, the darling of activists who refused to know any better until it was actually implemented and shown to be a disaster, there is a certain amount of marketing hype around CFL bulbs and…

Which of the following Latin American countries has the highest murder rate? a. Nicaraguab. Mexicoc. Venezuelad. Jamaica If you answered "Mexico", you made a very reasonable choice. In the past year…

The Buzzword Blog #2 : What is a Buzzword? A buzzword is a word with a vague meaning, and which is commonly used in speech or writing to express a vague idea.  The buzzword category includes…

The first batch of newly designed Scientific Blogging logo stuff arrived today.   What do we have?   For biology writers, an excellent 'Lysis To Kill' logo.   For generally awesome…

DHS Begins Test of Biometric Exit Procedures at Two U.S. Airports, the next step toward deploying biometric exit procedures for international travelers. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS…

"The men are getting really angry and the women are a little too gleeful,” wrote New York Times columnist Lisa Belkin commenting on the overwhelming response she got for an article on a new…

I’m fascinated by the contributions of researchers outside of the mainstream— the monk whose bean garden seeded modern genetics, the bicycle mechanic brothers who built a flying machine in their…

FOXP2 may be the gene that makes us human - or so the hype goes. Hyped or not, FOXP2 is rightly a focus of intense research, since it is a gene that clearly has a major effect on human speech.…

If the history of science shows us anything, it is that we get nowhere by labeling our ignorance 'God'.    - Jerry Coyne, Nature, Sep. 19, 1996

"Somebody's got to stand up to experts," cried the creationist head of the Texas State Board of Education, Don McLeroy. McLeroy's lament is nothing new in American culture - we love to lionize the…

The key issue in considering competition is the question of whether changes in resource availability or mates would alter the confrontation. If the answer is negative, then no competition can be said…

The Buzzword Blog #1 Invent your own ism! Sometimes the natural grammar of the English language can permit an excessive freedom in the coinage of new words and terms.  For example, there is a…

"Berlusconi in his life had about twenty wives, two of whom were his" Roberto Benigni