"If we were not ignorant there would be no probability, there could only be certainty. But our ignorance cannot be absolute, for then there would be no longer any probability at all. Thus the…

In his recent article Should We Trust Scientists?, Paolo Ciafaloni wrote: The words I chose in my articles might seem simple, and possibly they are. But I think they reveal something of the…

As we reach old age, our bodies undergo several changes. And not for the better. More and more people are beginning to wonder whether we can do something about this. A lot of research is going on to…

Physicists have succeeded in taking a decisive step towards the development of more powerful computers; they were able to define two little quantum dots (QDs), occupied with electrons, in a…

I've mentioned the Littlest Squid before: the genus Idiosepius, which contains only a handful of very small, very adorable species. And I commented that they have this habit of gluing themselves to…

I met Makana in August 2005, where an old lava flow meets the ocean in a series of ledges and tide pools on Kauai, one of the Hawaiian Islands. He was a “local” of about my age who got his name…

If you're worried about getting the flu, chances are that you got an influenza vaccine; these are created on an annual basis and use a method from the 1950s; it is egg-based technology,…

I am a Science 2.0 newbie: I have written my first article  only a few days ago, and a second one shortly afterwards.  But I have soon realized that there is a sort of underground debate…

During the last decade, the almost singular focus on CO2 has been something of a puzzle; leaving out methane, with 23X the warming impact of CO2, seemed like a mistake. The ancient past tells us…

Darwin took decades to publish while Newton practically wrote his Principia so as not to have to bother answering questions from other physicists. Throughout science history the attitudes and methods…

Biologists working with fruit flies activated a gene called PGC-1, which increases the activity of mitochondria, the tiny power generators in cells that control cell growth and tell cells when to…

Only government could come up with this ingenious plan: President Obama’s Agriculture Department has announced that it will impose a new 15-cent charge on all fresh Christmas trees to support a…

Only government could come up with this ingenious plan: President Obama’s Agriculture Department has announced that it will impose a new 15-cent charge on all fresh Christmas trees to support a…

Dan Reus of the creative instigator/outfit Openly Disruptive ("the future will be what we make it") tossed me this note: I thought you might like to see the mention of you and Project Calliope in a…

Want to get people excited about space exploration?  Continue to use D&D-style names like Tharsis Tholus for geological features on Mars and every young man in the world will want to…

If you've studied the martial arts, or know anything at all about Asian culture, you have heard of the ch'i.  It's spelled lots of different ways, which happens when you turn Eastern sounds into…

Loudspeakers have improved a lot in the last 50 years but one pesky issue has remained; dead spots.    Modern oudspeakers can be designed to deliver the full frequency range of audible…

The current energy quandary means a lot of basic research is being done in alternative energy solutions; that's good, it's what basic research is for.  It also means political darlings of some…

Growing Jatropha for biofuel is hot topic and  claims of 10 tonnes per ha of Jatropha are laudable but need to be replicated and verified under different environmental conditions Still it has…

UHFF stands for Ultra-High Field Facility. The project is at times confused with the Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI), which includes three other experiments apart from UHFF. The total bill is $1.6…