Joan Roughgarden has responded to my comment about her recent KQED radio appearance. Her response includes this: Today, in 2007 only a few, like Roberts, still take Bailey’s work seriously. In 2006…

A new article published in the August issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests that infants fine-tune their visual and…

Did male deer evolve less durable teeth because they expect to die young or do they die sooner because their teeth wear out? Natural selection favors reproduction rather than survival; the cost of…

Previous studies have shown that there is a very weak correlation between experts’ judgments of cultural entertainment, such as movies, and popular judgment. These findings have been taken to mean…

Starting to diet seems to double the odds a teenage girl will begin smoking, a University of Florida study has found. UF researchers, who analyzed the dieting and smoking practices of 8,000…

Mr. Hank Campbell, founder of Scientific Blogging, requested that I respond to a recent posting by Seth Roberts, a professor of psychology at UC Berkeley. Roberts attacks me as part of his continuing…

Research by the University at Albany shows that information conveyed by a kiss can have profound consequences for romantic relationships, and can even be a major factor in ending one. In a recently…

How does the Great Barrier Reef work, and coral worldwide? Why do they bleach and die and how will they respond to climate change? Scientists at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies,…

The Spallation Neutron Source, the Department of Energy's $1.4 billion research facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has established a new record as the world's most powerful accelerator based…

How much more would you pay to be near people like you? What about education? Using restricted-access Census data, a new study examines a quarter-million households on a block-by-block basis to yield…

Bacterial parasites are a lot more creative than we thought. It turns out one species, Wolbachia, can insert almost its entire genome into the genomes of members of one host species (a fly called…

Scientists for the first time have observed elusive oscillations in the sun's corona, known as Alfvén waves, that transport energy outward from the surface of the sun. The discovery may give…

There have been a few additions to the SciFoo Lives On area on Nature Island in Second Life. The area has been divided into 36 numbered plots and most posters from the first two sessions have been…

It's the climate cat and dog fight of the decade. When Al Gore alleged that Hurricane Katrina was caused by global warming, it set off a firestorm in the atmospheric science community. A few…

Ancient cities arose not by decree from a centralized political power, as was previously widely believed, but as the outgrowth of decisions made by smaller groups or individuals, according to a new…

In response to inquiries after a previous blog entry, Macrocosmos and Microcosmos, this article discusses white tiger breeding and their conservational value. First a quick history: white tigers…

For bees, anyway. People are out of luck. A research team led by the University of Illinois has identified an odorant receptor that allows male drones to find a queen in flight. The receptor, on the…

Only about a fifth of the genes in a cell are switched on at any given time but environmental changes such as smoking lead to changes in that genetic activity. According to a Canadian team led by…

Ivermectin, the standard drug for treating river blindness (onchocerciasis), is causing genetic changes in the parasite that causes the disease, according to a new study by Roger Prichard (McGill…

Want to view the earth as its seen from any satellite? Here you go.