Increased schooling across sub-Saharan Africa may be lowering new HIV infections among younger adults, according to sociologists, suggesting a shift in a decades-long trend where formal education is…

Sometimes you open Nature magazine and are surprised by the latest discovery in quantum mechanics or molecular biology. Browsing through the March 5, 2009 issue I was stunned by an article penned by…

In the former USSR there was a popular joke: When two people sit down to conspire, one of them is a KGB agent and the other is a fool. Behind many conspiracy and denial theories is a common flaw,…

Insects such as honeybees and bumble bees are predictable in the way they move among flowers, typically moving directly from one flower to an adjacent cluster of flowers in the same row of plants.…

The most abundant material on Earth exhibits some unusual chemical properties when placed under extreme conditions. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists have shown that water, in hot…

Does a twin Earth exist somewhere in our galaxy?   NASA's Kepler spacecraft just launched to find such worlds, though in a very specific area.   If that search succeeds, the next questions…

Results of the first human clinical studies confirm that a new yogurt fights the bacteria that cause gastritis and stomach ulcers with what researchers describe as almost vaccine-like effects,…

Lighting consumes one-fifth of the electricity generated in the United States. Solid-state lighting offers tremendous potential to improve the situation – once major research challenges are overcome.…

Undergraduates are getting another free pass, ethically, and blame is being shifted to educators because apparently confusion about what constitutes plagiarism,  not malicious intent, is the…

Researchers are describing a long-awaited advance toward applying the marvels of nanotechnology in the battle against cancer. They have developed the first hollow gold nanospheres — smaller than the…

Researchers in Canada are reporting that proteins found in a common garden pea show promise as a natural food additive or new dietary supplement for fighting high blood pressure and chronic kidney…

Carbohydrates are tough molecules to build because of their complicated, branched structure. So instead of trying to build carbohydrates from scratch, scientists today use molecules isolated from…

 Assignee's Prerogative vs. Value: A.P. (for short) could be the root of value. A.P. is defined as "the decided worth you assign to your paradigms." (notice I said "your" paradigms, they…

If you read Geek Logik,you may have found, at least for a while, that you lost control over your own decision-making ability.    Geek Logik was a way to quantify every important decision…

Cancer patients who are malnourished experience significantly greater levels of psychological distress than those who are more adequately nourished, according to new results reported at the European…

Barry Kibrick, producer and host of the PBS program "Between the Lines" has given me permission to share his weekly newsletter which alerts readers of current and archived programs and delivers a…

This older talk by computer science pioneer Richard Hamming is awesome: One of the characteristics of successful scientists is having courage. Once you get your courage up and believe that you can…

There is a conversation about evolution that I’m apparently doomed to replay over and over with various family members, friends and acquaintances. I tell a friend that the evidence for evolution is…

Leading statistician Professor David Spiegelhalter claims today that the number of murders in London last year was not out of the ordinary and followed a predictable pattern. Spiegelhalter's report,…

John Hawks is not happy with it. I clicked on this John Timmer story about the new website, “Understanding Science”, directed toward the public and K-12 educators. What I found staring at me was a…