Scott Altman is a pretty cool guy.   He's the commander of the Atlantis mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope (and, as noted previously, astronaut John Grunsfeld is also carrying along…

We already have a war on drugs, a war on terror, and war against everything French (freedom fries anyone?) but our capacity for war is seemingly unlimited and the newest vendetta has targeted high…

Dark matter, dark energy and scalar tensor vector theories of gravity are widely thought of as at odds.  I have shown that if the scalar and vector fields common to alternative gravities are…

I have a confesson to make; I'm probably smarter than you. Don't take it badly, I am smarter than most people and I am not saying I am definitely smarter than you, because I don't know all…

John Tierney wants to know - how widespread is the problem of unethical competition in science? Here's the problem explained by Dr Sean Cutler on Tierney's blog: Sadly, there is a lot of unethical…

Why are people scared before an epidemic even happens?—A question inspired by the recent H1N1 outbreak.  From a sociological perspective, entities that we rely upon to keep us safe from harm are…

The oldest submerged town in the world is about to give up its secrets — with the help of equipment that could revolutionise underwater archaeology. The ancient town of Pavlopetri lies in three to…

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 discovery of a gruesome feeding frenzy that played out 73 million years ago in northwestern Alberta may also lead to the discovery of new dinosaur species in northwestern Alberta. University of…

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…