Once upon a time, I worked in an office that had a beat-up, steel bookcase in the break room.  This was our unofficial lending library, where anyone could drop off a book they had read and were…

Here at the University of Reading, the good folks of the Association for Science Education have been holding their annual conference, and RU staff members like myself are invited to participate. The…

Adam Drewnowski, director of the Nutrition Sciences Program at the University of Washington in Seattle,  says that an ongoing recession will lead to even more obesity.    Drewnowski…

Picture: Sundog on the right, the Sun on the left. Picture was taken in Finland, Lahti  3.1.2008. Sundogs exist, when there is ice in atmosphere which reflects the Sun light. The…

"Raw materials were not an issue" for the evolution of the first life on earth, argues Henderson Cleaves, a researcher at the Carnegie Institution, quoted in Carl Zimmer's Science essay on origins of…

In my last article, I ended with the observation that: While we cannot reject Cook's scientific contribution simply on thebasis of his embrace of racist pseudoscience, we also can't simplyignore it…

In 1609, 400 years ago, Galileo revolutionized humankind's understanding of our position in the Universe when he used a telescope for the first time to study the heavens and sketched radical new…

To make children happier, we may need to encourage them to develop a strong sense of 'personal worth', according to Dr. Mark Holder, Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia, …

6 newly discovered genes for obesity have a neural effect, according to the international GIANT (Genetic Investigation of Anthropometric Parameters) consortium. So far, the scientists have analyzed…

Nanotechnology exploits the properties of materials on a nanometric scale, (a nanometer is one millionth of a millimeter). The ultimate limit for such miniaturization is the development of devices…

The International Year of Astronomy 2009 (IYA2009) is a global celebration of astronomy and its contribution to society and culture, with strong emphasis on education, public participation, and the…

South America is the world’s most species-rich area and there have been many theories as to why, ranging from animals and plants accompanying the continent when it broke loose from Africa to…

When Charles Darwin published his landmark book On the Origin of Species(*) in 1859, his theories on evolution were quickly accepted by the vast majority of scientists. The general public, however,…

John Hawks reviews an article by Roni Caryn Rabin on the connection with glucose metabolism and age related cognitive decline. The original authors made clear that we remember: Previous…

That's because there is going to be so much great, non-technical writing in honor of Darwin's 200th birthday and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On The Origin of Species. We're going to…

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) Project might restart in 2009 Summer. I wrote twice about the incident that caused its shutdown on 19 September 2008. First,…

Einstein and Bohr – No names loom larger in the history of twentieth-century physics, and rightly so, Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr being the figures most prominently associated with the relativity…

Kawasaki Disease, recently in the news due to the death of Hollywood film star John Travolta's son Jett, has had some genetic variations identified in a genome-wide association study published in…

Or just try to change the law: There's the famous false story of the state that tried to redefine the fundamental mathematical constant pi to 3, but of course no one would ever be that stupid. Though…

Whenever one discusses the underlying genetic influences on human behavior, one is opening themselves up to being labelled a determinist.  Part of the reason for that is a total misunderstanding…