It appears that there is still a bit of a controversy and disconnect between the ideas in evolution relating to selfishness, cooperation, and altruism. In this series of articles, it is my intent to…

Anybody who wants to learn how to write a computer program is faced with a bewildering variety of programming languages.  The reasons for having so many computer languages are partly logical,…

Part 7 of my series of comments on the New Scientist magazine series “Eight things you didn’t know about the internet” goes into the “carbon footprint” of the Internet: “Is the net hurting the…

The recent Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco just held its annual meeting in Ireland; some fascinating research is happening all over the world. Researchers are looking at SNPs for…

The swine flu is spreading silently and slowly throughout the World, but it does not make headlines any more -or not yet again, at least. So far, a total of 8565 cases have been reported in five…

Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so each small piece of her fabric revels the organization of the entire tapestry. - Richard Feynman, The Character of Physical Law, p.34

If you didn't know better, you might think the Oldoinyo Lengai volcano in Tanzania was proof of alchemy. There, in the ancient East African Rift at a place known to local Maasai people as the…

Is "Multiplicity" your favorite movie?   Have you ever wished you could be in two places at once or create an evil twin (and name him Skippy)?   A research project called LifeLike is…

British parents call for a radical overhaul of the education system, saying that secondary school is not working for over a quarter (28 per cent) of children. According to independent education…

In Finland, leaders in various fields have taken up the challenge presented by the increasing use of natural resources. Jointly, they have set out to find an answer to the question of how to use…

Ounce for ounce, spinach has more nutritional value than iceberg lettuce; in general, darker colors in leafy vegetables mean more antioxidants and therefore more health benefits. Knowing that, plant…

A common blood test for triglycerides – a well-known cardiovascular disease risk factor – may also for the first time allow doctors to predict which patients with diabetes are more likely to develop…

Researchers comparing the fetal development of owl monkey eyes with those of the capuchin monkey have found that only a minor difference in the timing of cell proliferation can explain the multiple…

The lates news, is mutants. Would you like to read more about it?

In a previous article here I considered from a statistical standpoint the signal of Omega_b candidate decays extracted by the DZERO collaboration in a large dataset of proton-antiproton collisions…

Mummy's Little Grammatical genius How babies learn to use language. A special note of caution to students.  My description of how a baby probably acquires language is speculative and is not a…

A recent study of adult neural stem cells suggests a new route for research and development of  treatments for neurodegenerative disease in elderly patients. Within the last 20 years…

Before the days of mandatory underseat pet carriers, my airline colleagues received a call from a woman who needed to bring her therapy pet, a pig, on a flight. The airline didn’t see a problem,…

Astronauts blazed through their third of five spacewalks Saturday as they continued servicing the Hubble Space Telescope, installing the new Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) and repairing the main…

For the next installment in my series of comments on the New Scientist magazine series “Eight things you didn’t know about the internet”, we have two for one. Actually, not really: I’m going to skip…