A comment in the thread under my recent post on the greedy bump bias stimulates me to provide here idiot-proof instructions on how to study the effect by yourself, if you wish to spend your time this…

Now I know what happened to Michael Jackson: he tried to self-treat his eczema at home with Clorox. A study in the May 5 issue of Pediatrics suggested a combination of "bleach baths" and intranasal…

The art of haiku poetry originated in Japan, with roots stretching back to the ninth-century or earlier. According to the US Census of 2000, people of pure Japanese descent make up 16.7% of the…

Houston, Texas, hometown of both Roger Clemens and Walter Cronkite (and, errr, David Khoresh if we're being comprehensive) is a bellweather city for the US, says a researcher who happens to live in…

Filligent, a Hong Kong-based biotech company, is mobilizing stocks of its anti-infective BioMask to help combat the global spread of the deadly new Mexican strain of Influenza A.   The BioMask…

If pizza isn't already on the list of 7 greatest inventions of the post-modern world (because nothing goes with wanting to strangle someone who invokes Foucault like a nice slice of pepperoni) a new…

The idea that far distant particles can somehow 'talk' to each other led Einstein to call it 'spooky action at a distance'. Having confirmed its existence, scientists today are learning how to use…

Autism is a complex brain disorder that impairs social, communications and behavioral development.  It is often characterized by extreme behavior.   A new study by University of Utah School…

Scientists of Helmholtz Zentrum München, led by Professor Martin Hrabé de Angelis, director of the Institute of Experimental Genetics, have developed a new mouse model with a genetic mutant in which…

Most people are expert readers, but it is something of an enigma how our brain achieved expertise in such a recent cultural invention which requires a cognitive interface between vision and language.…

The theory that the Chicxulub crater holds the clue to the demise of the dinosaurs and 40 percent of all species 65 million years ago is challenged in a paper published in the Journal of the…

A Brief History of the English Language Part 4 - The People's English Part 1 briefly covered the period from the 5th century CE to the 14th century.Part 2 describes Chaucer's influence on the…

A great temple to the god Amon was built at Karnak in Upper Egypt around c. 1785. It is from Amon that we get his cephalopod namesake, the ammonites and also the name origin for the compound ammonia…

Myomancy was a method of divination by mice. Their behaviour was observed and taken as a omen of what was to come. If their movements were calm, aggitated or aggressive, much was read into it. …

The experience of pain appears to be a complex phenomenon with humans.  The reason for the occurrence of pain can be physical, psychological, or a combination of both of these causes.  And…

One possible solution to the occasional lack of access to, or shortage of, primary care doctors is what are known as retail care clinics, or convenience care clinics. The popularity of these clinics…

On April 21, 2009, CDC reported that two recent cases of febrile respiratory illness in children in southern California had been caused by infection with genetically similar swine influenza A (H1N1)…

Scientists have studied gamma oscillations, high-frequency brain waves, for over 50 years in the belief that they are crucial to understanding consciousness, attention, learning and memory. Now…

Two California children who had not had contact with pigs recently recovered from infections with "unique" swine flu/swine influenza viruses, raising concern about possible human-to-human…

c. 260ish...  Look at the history of money. What we've learned... Patterns... Rampant inflation brought a devaluation of currency and a return of bartering throughout the Roman Empire