If you're man, and you give to charity at all, it is more likely to go to a needy person in your neighborhood but if you're a woman you are more likely to be charitable and you will also give to…

65 million years of evolution divergence and being rodents is too much difference, says  Stanford immunologist Mark Davis, PhD , so we need to do more research on humans and less on mice.  …

A greater commitment by science faculty to focus on science education could drive education reform at universities and K-12 schools, according to a new report by a team of five researchers from the…

The festive season has arrived for astronomers at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in the form of this dramatic new image. It shows the swirling gas around the region known as NGC 2264 — an…

Venus Express has made the first detection of an atmospheric loss process on Venus's day-side. Last year, the spacecraft revealed that most of the lost atmosphere escapes from the night-side.…

It must be December.  Those cheeky pranksters at BMJ are at it again, this time releasing an authentic-looking study that says head banging is bad for your head.   Let's see how many media…

In a study published in the Christmas 2008 issue of the British Medical Journal (and not one of their prank articles), Aaron Carroll, M.D., M.S., and Rachel Vreeman, M.D., M.S., of the Indiana…

Good quality extra-virgin olive oil contains health-relevant chemicals, 'phytochemicals', that can trigger cancer cell death. New research published in the open access journal BMC Cancer sheds more…

As you can imagine, running a swanky science publication ends up getting me a lot of press releases.   People want to get the word out about what they are doing and I make no secret of the fact…

The astronomy/physics sector of the internets is all abuzz about Dark Energy. It was originally thought that gravity would slow the expansion of the universe as huge astronomical bodies become…

Can science journalism get any more embarrassingly bad? "Real-time gene monitoring developed" says a headline over at physorg.com. The piece starts off with an insane hook that makes no sense…

Whoever said that the pen is mightier than the sword definitely knew what they were talking about. To humans, words are more than a means of communication, they can shape our beliefs, behaviors,…

As a result of Sir Tom Jones citing his use of Vocalzone on Top Gear (14/12/2008) Kestrel, the (Poole based) makers of the Throat Pastille which is also known to be used Snoop Dogg, Madonna, Joss…

I can relate to Olivia Judson's experience with the digitization of science journals: On the good side, instead of hauling dusty volumes off shelves and standing over the photocopier, I sit…

As early as 1890, people were beginning to think about harnessing the power of the ocean. During the twenty-year span between 1890 and 1910, there were wave power generation stations built all along…

Ben Casnocha asks what I mean by appreciative thinking. A good question, since I invented the phrase. To learn appreciative thinking is to learn to appreciate, to learn to see the value of things.…

An evolutionary geneticist from the Université de Montréal, together with researchers from the French cities of Lyon and Montpellier, say a new study presented in the recent issue of Nature…

In pursuing cleaner energy there is such a thing as being too green. Unicellular microalgae, for instance, can be considered too green. In a paper in a special energy issue of Optics Express,…

It is sometimes claimed that changes in radiation from space, so-called galactic cosmic rays, can be one of the causes of global warming. A new study, investigating the effect of cosmic rays on…

A group of French research students is launching an online register to flag up scientific papers that have been tainted by fraud and other types of scientific misconduct. Claire Ribrault, a PhD…