In the 1960s Cold War paranoia led to the discovery of the most violent explosions in the Universe, which once again goes to show you the military accomplishes more good than academics think it does…

A group of researchers has created a model they say can identify and predict how multiple relationships form in social networks. The nuance, they say, is that multiple, distinct types of…

Why do flies like beer?  It's sweeter than you think.  Entomologists say the flies sense glycerol, the sweet-tasting compound that yeasts make during fermentation. The researchers examined…

Numerical models had a tough decade to start off the 2000s.  A field that had shown itself to be both scientific and applied in areas like semiconductor physics was extrapolated out to cultural…

Researchers are saying that the perception of nude bodies is boosted at an early stage of visual processing.  So it may be an overlap with the culturally forbidden nature of scantily clad or…

Roger Pielke, Jr. is one of the most authentic science communicators around.  When the science is solid, he supports it, regardless of the political or cultural implications, and when it is crap…

My thesis is now officially half published*! Can we have a party or something? Marine Ecology Progress Series has just put out my paper, "Effects of temperature on the embryonic development of the…

Cosmic particle accelerators may be more efficient than previously thought, according to a discovery which has revealed the initial stages of acceleration for the first time. In space, large magnetic…

It's been a while since my last "guess the plot" posting. The simple explanation is that I did not happen to run into any fancy graph in the last month or so. Now, today I have one for you to guess,…

Psychology Today, which has been to psychology woo what Huffington Post is to medical woo, ironically has an astute columnist calling out the shoddy research methods we have been ridiculing in…

Psychology Today, which has been to psychology woo what Huffington Post is to medical woo, ironically has an astute columnist calling out the shoddy research methods we have been ridiculing in…

I have said too many times to count we should not be subsidizing failed, inefficient technology like solar cells.  As with the ethanol fetish of the 2000s, solar energy has been spearheaded by a…

I have said too many times to count we should not be subsidizing failed, inefficient technology like solar cells.  As with the ethanol fetish of the 2000s, solar energy has been spearheaded by a…

Bethesda Softworks' "The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim" has enjoyed an enthusiastic reception by gamers across the globe. After shipping seven million units of Skyrim for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC…

A new compound has been shown to reduce Body Mass Index (BMI) and abdominal circumference in obese rhesus monkeys, and imaging revealed a substantial decrease in body fat. In contrast to current…

Precognition (from the Latin præ-,“before,” + cognitio, “acquiring knowledge”), is usually filed under esoteric pseudoscience. There are scientific articles on precognition, but pointing this out…

This video has become quite popular the last few days, so if you've already seen it, my apologies. Nevertheless, I decided to post it here because it's just so darn pretty. It's a time lapse sequence…

So People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals doesn't like Super Mario.  Really, I don't either.  Wasn't he the bad guy in Donkey Kong?  Donkey Kong was the name of the game, after…

At the end of 2011, the second season in a row of a suddenly and mysteriously booming market squid fishery, Michael Vincent McGinnis of the Santa Barbara Independent offers a thoughtful commentary.…

VocalWall LTD has released a tool to post private vocal messages on Facebook and other social networks. Traditionally, text messaging has been the sole form of private communication. …