James Hansen, a former head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies who was one of the first scientists to raise concerns about global climate change, spoke at MIT Tuesday in the biennial David…

The two heaviest naturally occurring radioactive elements (by atomic weight) on the earth are Uranium and Thorium.  Uranium is used as a fuel in modern commercial nuclear power reactors for…

Surveying news headlines in recent years, it seems that cheating is rampant. In the athletic arena, Lance Armstrong was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles for using performance-enhancing…

A new wearable device turns the user’s thumbnail into a miniature wireless track pad, which could let users control wireless devices when their hands are full or enable subtle communication in…

Using technology like tablets in schools has turned into a heated political debate. Los Angeles infamously spent $1.3 billion on a program to give iPads to each student, a program that has been…

Astronomers and planetary scientists have been waiting with bated breath for the first detailed close-up images of Ceres, the solar system’s largest asteroid. Now, with NASA’s Dawn spacecraft…

Neuroscientists say the brain hormone oxytocin acts on individual brain cells to prompt specific social behaviors.  Until now, oxytocin - the "love" hormone - has been linked to sexual…

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Uninsured cancer patients are asked to pay anywhere from 2 to 43 times what Medicare would pay for chemotherapy drugs, according to a new paper. Uninsured patients who did not negotiate the billed…

I wrote this when New Horizons was approaching Pluto, and expected to find new moons and possibly a ring system. So, just as a fun question to hook this post on, I asked, could it find a moon of a…

A study of college students links eating in restaurants with high blood pressure, even in young people. Globally, high blood pressure - hypertension - is the leading risk factor for death associated…

When Seattle man, Jason Padgett, walked into a bar for a drink a few years ago, he was an ordinary man with seemingly average intelligence leading an unremarkable life. He worked contentedly in his…

Evolution has endowed females of certain species of amphibians, reptiles and fish with the ability to clone themselves and perpetuate offspring without males. It has even happened more recently but…

Breast cancer patients often display mild cognitive defects even before chemotherapy and doctors are attributing that to a kind of preemptive post-traumatic stress disorder induced by diagnosis of…

A survey of California doctors found that a majority of the 525 who responded believe the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA, also called Obamacare) will steer the country's health care…

I used to post on this blog very abstruse graphs from time to time, asking readers to guess what they represented. I don't know why I stopped it - it is fun. So here is a very colourful graph for you…

Macrophages destroy bacteria by engulfing them in intracellular compartments, which they then acidify to kill or neutralize the bacteria. Some pathogenic bacteria, such as Salmonella enterica, have…

In a music buying industry now dominated by iTunes and music streaming sites such as Spotify, Napster, Pandora and Jay-Z’s recently released Tidal, the CD and physical music store are reportedly in…

In 2013, Typhoon Haiyan killed more than 6,000 people and destroying nearly $3 billion worth of property in the Philippines. While the country is still recovering from the storm, researchers have…

Karin Heineman, Inside Science TV –  Beer! Most Americans choose it over all other alcoholic beverages. It's also one of the world's oldest beverages. In fact the first evidence of beer…