Bio-oil is an aqueous, acidic, highly oxidized mixture. However, its high oxygen content and instability turn out to have a negative impact: bio-oil cannot be used directly as a liquid fuel. It would…

Rare traits persist in a population because predators detect common forms of prey more easily. Researchers writing in BMC Ecology found that birds will target salamanders that look like the majority…

The evolution game Spore was somewhat of a critical flop - especially among scientists. The game has glitzy graphics, but, for a game billed as being somehow connected to science, the science sucked.…

With an unexpected move, the Austrian Minister of Research and Science, Johannes Hahn, announced last Friday that he intends to put an end to the 50-year-long participation of Austria to CERN. Such a…

Frederick II (1194 –1250), Holy Roman Emperor and King of Sicily, so I have read, preferred equation-solving contests to watching knights impaling each other in jousting. Certainly, the great…

A couple of entomologists at Arizona State have done what NASA famously failed to do: name a thing after Stephen Colbert. The Agaporomorphus colberti diving beetle joins the ranks of Colbert’s many…

Radiation ! The word brings sudden silence and a feel of insecurity. The effect of  nuclear radiation brings the memory of  Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Everyone wishes  to escape from…

On my way back to CERN from Fermilab (yes, I am betting on two tables at a time these days, as our Poker-addict friend Garth Sundem suggests), I made a 7-hour stopover in New York. Originally this…

A new machine developed at North Carolina State University makes an animal heart pump much like a live heart after it has been removed from the animal's body, allowing researchers to expedite the…

Chessplayers are a strange lot. Those who get attracted by the game and end up sticking to it, making it the game of their life, are typically intelligent, creative thinkers; yet among them one may…

The success of religion may be the fault of non-believers (or, if you look at it the other way around, thank god for the atheists!)  At least that is one interpretation of a recent individual…

No matter what you read in the various published strategy guides and online chat rooms about pot odds, implied odds, reverse-implied odds and pot equity, there is no mathematically definite strategy…

The death toll due to malaria outbreaks has reached over million lives every year with an additional 300-500 million people suffering illness from serious malaria infections. The growing pandemic and…

Acupuncture can help people with chronic low back pain feel less bothered by their symptoms and function better in their daily activities, according to the largest randomized trial of its kind,…

Aggressive, vengeful behavior of individuals in some South American groups has been considered the means for men to obtain more wives and more children, but an international team of anthropologists…

When it comes to immunity, men may not have been dealt an equal hand. The latest study by Dr. Maya Saleh, of the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre and McGill University, shows…

Can fundamental genes acquire new functions?  A new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Indiana University Bloomington biologist Armin Moczek and research associate…

Wood or concrete for a cleaner environment? Wood seems like the obvious answer because it is natural, biodegradeable and renewable but  in the railway industry it isn't so simple.  …

Increased competition and the global economic crisis have cast clouds upon the Western European solar energy market. Falling polysilicon and solar module prices have the potential to cement China's…

Tunable fluidic micro lenses can focus and direct light at will to count cells, evaluate molecules or create on-chip optical tweezers, according to a team of Penn State engineers. They may also…