A plastic material already used in absorbable surgical sutures could also administer antibiotics to patients with brain infections, scientists report in a new study. Use of the material, placed…

Detectives of both the amateur and occupational variety know that the best way to solve a mystery is to visit the scene where it began and look for clues. Cosmological detectives do that too, by…

When I walk in a seminar or lecture room, it looks mostly as 30 or 40 years ago. Then lifting my eyes I would notice that the "data"-projector is still there hanging from the ceiling, in addition to…

Steven Pinker has written a long essay in The New Republic embracing scientism. That's really too bad, because this way Pinker joins a disturbingly long list of scientists (and a few philosophers)…

We're in a hyper-regulated society. Everyone wants to regulate other people while they claim to care about freedom and choice. If you claim to care about freedom and then want to ban marriage or IVF…

An international team has found evidence of substantial overlap for genetic risk factors shared between bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder and schizophrenia and less overlap between those…

A pre-emptive warning to the reader: the article below is too long to publish as a single post. I have broken it out in four installments. After reading the text below you should continue with part…

Here's a development that could have significant implications for electrochemistry, biochemistry, electrical engineering and many other fields: a Nature Materials paper is about computer simulations…

You have decided to start a graduate study in physics. Where should you apply? And how to decide which offer to take? A diarrhea of lists attempt to rank "the world’s best universities". Mostly…

What group has above average interest in systems and scores below average in empathy? If you answered autistic people, you are correct. If you answered girls with anorexia, also correct. Girls with…

I wrote before about the controversy involving the release earlier this year of a genome sequence of the HeLa cell line, which was taken without consent from Henrietta Lacks as she lay dying of…

When I think of cheap knock-offs I think of things like a Rolex watch or a Gucci handbag, but apparently knock-off food is a $10-15 billion industry. I don't even mean the faux organic stuff sold as…

Battleships are so World War II. And while aircraft carriers have ruled since then, naval air power relying on them is primarily effective against targets that are decades behind. So while Raytheon…

Battleships are so World War II. And while aircraft carriers have ruled since then, naval air power relying on them is primarily effective against targets that are decades behind. So while Raytheon…

A young child buried in the medieval town of Ribe in Denmark 800 years ago had an unpleasant life even before that - because the child had been given a large dose of mercury in an attempt to cure a…

There is a phenomenon in speech called coarticulation, in which certain sounds are produced differently depending on the sounds that come before or after them. For example, though the letter n is…

Surveys show that people have less empathy for battered human adults than they do dogs, according to a paper at the American Sociological Association. Jack Levin  and Arnold Arluke, sociology…

Do you remember the X(3872) ? This is a hadron containing charm and anticharm quarks, which was observed to decay into a J/Psi meson, a positive, and a negative pion. When it was discovered, by the…

I like the idea of "Shark Week" but I confess I am more of a reader than a television viewer. Still, when Discovery Channel whacked me as part of their "Shark Week" promotional campaign a few years…

Cocaine use may cause profound metabolic changes which can result in dramatic weight gain during recovery, a distressing phenomenon that can lead to relapse - the reason is because chronic cocaine…