Mothers Rock! The Hand That Rocks The Cradle Blessings on the hand of women!Angels guard its strength and grace,In the palace, cottage, hovel,Oh, no matter where the place;Would that never storms…

There's a line that politicians opposed to embryonic stem cell research have been peddling lately: recent breakthroughs in stem cell technology have now made ethically questionable embryonic stem…

I don't qualify for the original exploratory study - I'm not 55+ or at high risk for heart disease - but I'm crossing my fingers that the initial results are promising so they go ahead with a planned…

A new study from Northwestern University shows what many mothers already know: their babies are a lot smarter than others may realize. Though only five months old, the study's cuties indicated…

New research led by investigators at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) identifies three genes that specifically mediate the metastasis, or spread, of breast cancer to the brain and…

Children who can stay focused and don't sweat the small stuff have a better shot at good health in adulthood -- especially girls, according to findings reported in the May issue of Health Psychology.…

A detailed analysis of the feet of Homo floresiensis, the miniature hominins who lived on a remote island in eastern Indonesia until 18,000 years ago, may help settle a question hotly debated among…

If you know anyone who grew up in Chicago or was raised there yourself, you've likely heard a classy, intellectual term applied to anyone exhibiting a wide variety of behaviors. That's right, I'm…

Most people know Edwin Hubble as a famed astronomer, the namesake of the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope (HST).  Most probably don't know he also starred as a forward on the University of…

The Fermi collaboration released yesterday a paper describing their measurement of the electron and positron flux of cosmic rays. Simultaneously, a second paper was published by the HESS…

Will we ever have a set of standardized biochemical devices that synthetic biologists can snap together to make more complex systems? I'm skeptical that any single standardized biological device will…

According to The Scientist,  Merck paid Elsevier to publish Merck's own "peer-reviewed" fan-zine, Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine, in 2003.  Its articles don't show up in…

Engineering A Biological Pulse Generator I've got my issues with synthetic biology. Either synthetic biologists do something trivial dressed up in elaborate engineering language, or they achieve…

While I was napping, Jupiter became a 2nd sun. Although it was observed in January by STEREO, we forgot to tell people. Or perhaps we were hiding the truth. Also, it was so well covered on YouTube…

Jan Hendrik Schön, if you have heard the name, will either fascinate or enrage you.   His ability to progress from ridiculous fibs to world-class deception as a 31-year-old physicist working at…

Toddlers with autism appear more likely to have an enlarged amygdala, a brain area associated with numerous functions, including the processing of faces and emotion, according to a report in the May…

It's certainly the case that 'dark matter', like 'Smurf' or 'government regulation', has in recent times become a de facto explanation for the unexplained.   We aren't big believers in magic so…

If you want to learn a little something about 'characteristic curvature', you're in the right place.   Hydrophilic surfactants love water, but lipophilic surfactants love oils and dislike…

This has been a slow news day.  On such days, my mind tends to drift somewhat.  Combining the science of linguistics with the philosophical notion of multiple parallel universes leads to…

With hot, new technologies, biologists are taking higher-resolution snapshots of what's going on inside the cell, but the results are stirring up controversy. One of the most interesting recent…