Saving energy is big business these days and automobiles are a prime target for savings because two-thirds of the energy from fuel is wasted in the form of heat - about 30 percent through the engine…

A new type of exercise equipment, first designed for actor Christopher Reeve, who played "Superman" in the 1977 film and its three sequels, can prevent serious lifestyle illnesses in paraplegic…

States that perform local-level background checks for firearms purchases are more effective in reducing firearm suicide and homicide rates than states that rely only on a federal-level background…

The odds are poor that humanity will ever curtail CO2 emissions sufficiently fast against even the mid-case global warming scenarios forecast by climatologists. A possible near-term remedy, however,…

Ramanathan has served on IPCC WG2 Panels, he headed the UN's INDOEX project and he's as solid a climate scientist as we have. Ramanathan's surprising field data found that tropospheric soot…

A black iceberg & melting snow http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=impure-as-the-driven-snow Up to 90 percent of the centennial Arctic thaw appears to be due to soot, with the Arctic…

An analysis of ongoing randomized clinical trials (RCTs) in diabetes finds that only about 20 percent have as primary outcomes results that patients consider important, such as illness, pain, effect…

The folding of paper or drops of water falling from a tap are two events which involve the creation of singularities requiring sophisticated mathematical techniques to describe, analyze and predict.…

A new study by Yan Zhang at Rice University's Jones Graduate School of Management seeks to determine why CEOs leave the job after a short period. Of the 204 company leaders Zhang studied from 1993 to…

Getting an accurate picture of information and people is difficult. If you start counting people in China today, by the time you finish there are a lot more. Ditto with information. So you may get…

Disinfectants are routinely used on hard surfaces in hospitals to kill bacteria, with antimicrobial containing wipes increasingly being employed for this purpose. A study by the University's Welsh…

Scientists in Portugal just found a new molecular mechanism behind colorectal cancer in which a mutated and a normal, but over-expressed, gene cooperate and are both needed to create the disease. The…

Mind readers have long been the domain of folklore and science fiction. But some new findings demonstrate the power of computational modeling to improve our understanding of how the brain processes…

Over at Cosmic Variance, Sean tells us that the purpose of Harvard is not to educate people. Lately, there has been a dustup between Harvard, with its fat endowment, and various groups, including the…

Physicist and author Brian Green had an interesting opinion piece in yesterday's NY Times, arguing that we need to care about more than just science literacy - we have to promote excitement about…

Much of the coverage of autism in the media focuses on the arguments of advocates, scientists, and government officials over the relationship between vaccines and autism. But out of the spotlight, a…

As I wrote a few days ago, if we agree that the nature of science is along the lines I have described, next we need to ask why it is so. Platt, in his classic 1964 article on strong inference,…

An article published in the Journal of Forensic Science details the fruits of a collaboration between the University of Leicester and the Northamptonshire Police, which led to a “major breakthrough”…

It used to be you went to see a doctor, he gave expert advice and you did what you were told. In today's world, patients have the opportunity to become more knowledgeable, sometimes increasing…

Brown dwarfs, "failed stars", are a class of objects that represent the missing link between the lowest-mass stars and the gas-giant planets, such as Jupiter and Saturn. Brown dwarfs are the faintest…