If the drinker paradox states that in any pub there is a customer such that, if he or she drinks, everybody in the pub drinks and the diamond-water paradox states that water is more useful than…

Since people have asked, here is my take on Stuart Kauffman’s ideas on reductionism and emergence. Kauffman distinguishes between two types of emergence, “epistemological” and “ontological.”…

According to Peter Olson of the Natural History Museum in London, "All free-living organisms host one or more parasites." This can be taken two ways, both of them generally true: a) that each…

Surcharges. those annoying fees like shipping and handling, have been around since the advent of catalogs and remain in the days of the Internet. Everyone hates them but how many of us base our…

Somewhere, people got the idea that girls were not as good at math as boys and that was a cultural issue - discrimination on one side or favoritism on the other - and it had to be fixed, usually with…

CD4+ T lymphocytes, or simply CD4 T cells, are the "brains" of the immune system, coordinating its activity when the body comes under attack. They are also the cells that are attacked by HIV, the…

Using ESO's Very Large Telescope Interferometer, astronomers were able to witness for the first time the appearance of a shell of dusty gas around a star that had just erupted and follow its…

Themis was the blindfolded Greek goddess of order and justice. It's also a NASA-funded mission which stands for Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms - and, using it,…

A new discovery contradicts the prevailing theory that aging is a buildup of tissue damage akin to rust in some metals, and implies science might eventually halt or even reverse the ravages of age.…

By using the gravitational magnification from six massive lensing galaxy clusters, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has provided scientists with the largest sample of very distant galaxies seen to…

Over the last decade, energy drinks like such as Red Bull, Monster and Rockstar have become nearly popular on college campuses. The global market for these types of drinks currently exceeds $3…

Along with all the other changes that come with age, healthy older people also lose some capacity for sleep, according to a new report published online on July 24th in Current Biology, a Cell Press…

UC Irvine researchers have found a molecular link between circadian rhythms, our body clock, and metabolism. The discovery reveals new possibilities for the treatment of diabetes, obesity and other…

Bring on the bad weather. A single typhoon in Taiwan buries as much carbon in the ocean (in the form of sediment) as all the other rains in that country all year long - combined. The study…

One of the reasons people on low-carbohydrate diets may lose weight is that they reduce their intake of fructose, a type of sugar that can be made into body fat quickly, according to a researcher at…

Livestock manure, left to decompose naturally, emits two particularly potent greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) – nitrous oxide and methane. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,…

Isoflavones (daidzein, genistein and glycitein), found mainly in soy beans and soy-derived products, are plant-derived compounds with estrogenic effects. While animal studies have linked the high…

According to a study conducted at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, older people who did endurance exercise training for about a year ended up with metabolically much younger…

Although state lotteries, on average, return just 53 cents for every dollar spent on a ticket, people continue to pour money into them — especially low-income people, who spend a larger percentage of…

If you walk down a US city street and don't think a lot of people are overweight, you probably are. Likewise, thin people will increasingly be regarded as an anomaly to be eliminated out of concern…