I'm sorry I've been away so long:  The "press of life" got the "better of me".  Sometimes, life just "gets in the way".  (No excuses.  I simply had other "things" that needed to…

If you have been to a tomato farm, you know that commercial tomato plants have a very different look from the backyard garden variety. Rather than being tall and lanky plants, tomatoes that will be…

The federal government's proposal to discontinue protection for the gray wolf across the United States could have the unintended consequence of endangering other species, insist academics who don't…

In the last few years it became popular to sell health books blaming fructose for obesity and, more recently, to blame all sugars. Pancake syrup bottle today highlight that they have no high fructose…

People who identify with the various versions of the skeptic / atheist / rationalist / freethinking movement(s) hold up the Enlightenment, the famous “Age of Reason,” to be the pinnacle of human…

Some bacteria achieve resistance to antibiotics through mutation but other types of bacteria, known as 'persistent' bacteria, are not resistant to the antibiotics but simply continue to exist in a…

There are many pests in the world which attack plants or compete with them for the resources they need to grow.  This is true for plants growing in natural stands, but also for the plants that…

4 billion ago, during the Archean eon, Earth's mantle temperatures were significantly higher than they are today, according to recent numerical model calculations. A new paper from researchers at at…

President Obama called it a 'Sputnik Moment' and, when you weren't wondering why a guy who is against war uses a lot of military terminology and invokes Ronald Reagan(1), you may have still…

Physicists at Yale and Harvard have thrown a new curve at Supersymmetry, the popular hypothesis about what lies beyond physics' reigning model of fundamental forces and particles, the Standard…

Medical researchers have found a way to reverse a cause of aging in animals - and it doesn't involve starvation.  The work relates to mitochondria, which are our cells' battery packs and give…

Though table salt, sodium chloride (NaCl), is one of the best-known and most studied chemical compounds known, it still has a few mysteries. Under ambient conditions, it crystallizes in a cubic…

Stem cell-based gene therapy holds promise for the treatment of devastating genetic skin diseases, but the long-term clinical outcomes of this approach have been unclear. In a recent study,…

http://www.sacbee.com/2012/05/04/4464809/california-cap-and-trade-will.html http://www.sacbee.com/2012/04/29/4449306/cap-and-trade-has-lessons-for… http://www.nypost.com/p/blogs/capitol/carbon_tax…

In the 1970s, during the heyday of progressive social engineering ideas like forced busing, education began to plummet.  President Jimmy Carter's solution to education woes was to create another…

http://www.sciencecodex.com/children_allergic_to_eggs_can_benefit_from_e... Allergies have increased a lot in the last generation and it's unclear why.  Some people claim they can taste GMOs and…

http://www.sciencecodex.com/study_shows_islamist_extremists_emphasize_se... http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2012/07/08/2594625/pakistan-shuns-physi…

http://action.fooddemocracynow.org/sign/stop_the_monsanto_protection_act/http://southeastfarmpress.com/government/ag-appropriations-bill-delayed… The House of Representatives has provided a respite…

The biggest surprise I got after starting Science 2.0 and getting to know scientists in a number of fields was that the private sector did no basic research. This was a surprise to [ insert link…

If you hear someone outside science disparage the word 'consensus', they are talking about climate science - and the reference is not positive.  'Consensus' means a general agreement, of course,…