Our Genomes, ENCODE, and Intelligent Design

Our Genomes, ENCODE, and Intelligent Design

What has the ENOCODE project done, and how do their results change our understanding of the human genome? In Time to Rethink the Gene? I put this project into perspective by briefly outlining some…
Black Holes Don't Exist, Say Researchers

Black Holes Don't Exist, Say Researchers

"Nothing there," is what Case Western Reserve University physicists concluded about black holes after spending a year working on complex formulas to calculate the formation of new black holes. In…
A New and Useful Word

A New and Useful Word

The word is black-and-white-ism. For instance: Paul Berman’s chief problem as a thinker is black-and-white-ism, and this is a good example of his failure to make subtle distinctions. Scientists are…
A Liquid Telescope On The Moon

A Liquid Telescope On The Moon

An international team including researcher Ermanno Borra, from Université Laval’s Center for Optics, Photonics, and Laser, have found a combination of materials that allows the creation of a highly…
Better Than Ethanol: DMF From Biomass Sugar

Better Than Ethanol: DMF From Biomass Sugar

Plants absorb carbon dioxide from the air and combine it with water molecules and sunshine to make carbohydrate or sugar. Variations on this process provide fuel for all of life on Earth. University…
Arctic Ocean Was Once A Lake

Arctic Ocean Was Once A Lake

Sediment cores retrieved from the Arctic’s deep-sea floor by the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program’s Arctic Coring Expedition (ACEX) report that the Arctic Ocean changed from a landlocked body of…
Surprising Origin Of Cell's Internal "Highways"

Surprising Origin Of Cell's Internal "Highways"

Scientists have long thought that microtubules, part of the microscopic scaffolding that the cell uses to move things around in order to hold its shape and divide, originated from a tiny structure…
Why Females Cheat

Why Females Cheat

Women cheat on men for their own needs but superb starling females stray from their mates for the sake of their chicks, according to recent Cornell research. This reasoning includes being able to…
The Unified Theory of Stem Cell Research

The Unified Theory of Stem Cell Research

Researchers say they have discovered the gene that regulates stem cell ability to self-renew and to differentiate into highly specialized types. This means they could program stem cells to become…
The Neural Computer In The Cerebellum

The Neural Computer In The Cerebellum

Researchers have discovered a sophisticated neural computer, buried deep in the cerebellum, that performs inertial navigation calculations to figure out a person’s movement through space. These…
Zeroing in on the brain's speech 'receiver'

Zeroing in on the brain's speech 'receiver'

A particular resonance pattern in the brain’s auditory processing region appears to be key to its ability to discriminate speech, researchers have found. They found that the inherent rhythm of neural…
'Super' stainless steel

'Super' stainless steel

A new type of stainless steel alloy developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory could allow for significantly increased operating temperatures and corresponding increases in efficiency in future…
Prehistoric Jewelry Dates Back 82,000 Years

Prehistoric Jewelry Dates Back 82,000 Years

A major question in evolutionary studies today is how early did humans begin to think and behave in ways we would see as fundamentally modern? One index of ‘behavioral modernity’ is in the…
Detecting plants on other planets

Detecting plants on other planets

It's fun to imagine life on other planets being advanced alien civilizations and exotic creatures conversing in foreign languages but it's not possible to determine any of those things now. Instead,…
Curbing the Obesity Epidemic

Curbing the Obesity Epidemic

The obesity epidemic has become a major public health problem in both industrialized countries and the developing world. Recent studies suggest that the major development of persistent adiposity is…