Every year, about 500 million people worldwide are infected with the parasite that causes dysentery, a global medical burden that among infectious diseases is second only to malaria. In a new study…

As a science site, one thing we understand is physics and how it can be exculpatory - no snowflake in an avalance ever has to take the blame. The American Beverage Association(ABA) knows this too.…

Normally, everything I write about here is at least indirectly connected to science in some way. However, today I am drifting into the world of music. The New York Times had an article a few days ago…

Well, I have previously started an "Open Evolution" series here and now I am starting an "Open Metagenomics" series. I know, I have gotten grief from some out there (yes, you Rob Edwards - see…

It's an urban legend we've all read - you meet some nice girl in Thailand and you black out and wake up in a bathtub without a kidney. Kidneys, and other replaceable organs, have value because the…

New evidence that chemical contaminants are finding their way into the deep-sea food web has been found in deep-sea squids and octopods, including the strange-looking "vampire squid". These species…

Fragile X syndrome (FXS) robs the brain of a protein that plays a major role in the way neurons communicate and that is essential for brain development, learning and memory. A team of scientists has…

The Atlantic is asking Is Google Making Us Stupid? They quote a pathologist at the University of Michigan School of Medicine: “I now have almost totally lost the ability to read and absorb a longish…

Michael Shermer (the well known author and publisher of Skeptic magazine) and I usually see eye to eye on all things skeptical. On matters of economics, however, we seem to depart…

An important component of early genetic material found in meteorite fragments is extraterrestrial in origin, say scientists from Europe and the USA. They say their research in Earth and Planetary…

Today Doritos makes history, taking the UK’s first step in communicating with aliens as they broadcast the first ever advert directed towards potential extra terrestrial life. The transmission is…

CARLISLE, England, June 13 /PRNewswire/ -- Published today, The Pattern Recognition Theory of Humour, by Alastair Clarke, answers the eternal question about the nature of humor. Clarke explains how…

Practice makes perfect, but a question that still remains a mystery is why it is so difficult to transfer learning from a trained to an untrained task? Why are we no better at remembering faces when…

University of Florida mechanical and aerospace engineering associate professor Subrata Roy has submitted a patent application for a circular, spinning aircraft design reminiscent of the spaceships…

New research from the American Museum of Natural History says that global warming is forcing species to move up tropical mountains. Christopher Raxworthy, Associate Curator in the Department of…

Pharyngula has an interesting graph showing the steady improvement in survival rates of childhood leukemia over the last 40 years. A disease that was essentially an automatic death sentence 40 years…

A fascinating story in the New York Times today on kin recognition in plants (see Plants Found to Show Preferences for Their Relatives ). They report The sea rocket, researchers report, can…

Sorry - just had to make up that little title because I had a funny conversaiton with someone where I was trying to say, concisely, that Ryan Gregory, who has a nice blog called Genomicron, had…

Now - I confess I was really impressed with how ASM handled this enormous meeting I was just at. If you are going to have a big meeting, ASM does a smashing job. And I can see how such big…

Well, I just gave my talk on phylogenomic and functional predictions and am going to try and catch up with blogging. In my talk I discussed how an understanding of function and prediction of…