Apple's Siri sounds like she cares about your needs, but she is faking it.  But some research by a team of engineers shown at the IEEE Workshop on Spoken Language Technology describes a new…

Arthrobotrys oligospora doesn't live a charmed life; it survives on a diet of roundworm, which isn't all that appealing, but the discovery of a team led by Mingjun Zhang, an associate professor of…

I like to think of palaeontology as a historical science. We use science as a tool to speculate and test ideas about the history of life on Earth. The alternative is mythology, where we create ideas…

Plants grow upward from a tip of undifferentiated tissue called the shoot apical meristem. As the tip extends, stem cells at the center of the meristem divide and increase in numbers and the cells on…

Probiotics are the miracle product of the decade because of the belief they can help cultivate “intestinal flora”, whatever that is supposed to mean.  It's a $32 billion industry by 2014 but…

We can read words and phrases and even solve multi-step mathematical problems without conscious awareness, say a team of psychologists at the Hebrew University. They conducted experiments which they…

Two NASA satellites,  Terra and the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) , gathered data as a Super Typhoon passed over Bopha on Dec. 2nd, gathering valuable data for forecasters. Since…

One of the silliest tropes in the hyped-up 'controversy' over evolution is that all religious people should be conflated with 'Young Earth Creationists'.   It's disrespectful and derisive, and…

In 1972, a term related to the parts of a genome sequence that don't have a known function was introduced. Like physicists with the 'God particle', a lot of biologists wish they could take back the…

It sounds as suspect as every other lie detector test, but psychologists have used thermography, a technique based on determining body temperature, to determine if someone is telling the truth. They…

If you can't afford heat during the ongoing economic malaise, there is some good news; psychology surveys show that students who think about happier times are warmer. The results, published in…

Global carbon dioxide emission reductions that would be needed to limit global warming to 2°C aren't happening, according to new figures produced by the Global Carbon Project (GCP). Global CO2…

Organophosphate pesticides were once commonly used in roach control and other applications but organiphosphates were originally developed as nerve-gas agents for chemical warfare. The human body…

For badminton players: “The centre piece of the game is no doubt a shuttlecock which is made of either natural feathers or synthetic rubber with an open conical shape.” But perhaps some are left…

The conceptual design report of the Mu2E experiment at Fermilab is out in the arxiv for you to browse. Mind you - it is a rather thick document, 562 pages in all, so if all you have is 15' of lunch…

Neuroscientists think they have some insight for evolutionary biologists into how humans, and other mammals, have evolved to have intelligence. They say they have identified the moment in history…

Kerosene is the the primary source of light for more than a billion people in developing nations and it is churning out black carbon previously overlooked in greenhouse gas estimates, says a new…

A previously invincible mutation in chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) has been thwarted by an investigational drug in a phase I clinical trial. 12 patients in a trial with chronic phase CML and the…

An online calculator says it can predict at birth a baby's likelihood of becoming obese in childhood, according to a paper in PLOS ONE. They estimate the child's obesity risk based on its birth…

When people witness a hurtful action they make a moral determination based on whether it is intentional or accidental instantly, according to a new paper. The paper says the brain is hard-wired to…