If you're not from a part of the U.S.A. that read the "Li'l Abner" comics by Al Capp, you may not know Sadie Hawkins Day - but butterflies do.   Sadie Hawkins, as comic strip aficionados know,…

Ok, I promise - my next post here will be a highly interesting article on the status of searches for new heavy Z bosons. In the meantime, however, I allow myself another "personal" post. After an…

A number of scientific organizations these days are creating Meet the Scientist programs and sending scientists and engineers out into public schools, science cafes, and other venues with the hope…

      The following is a story written by my fiancee, who has Tourrette's syndrome, regarding a personal experience at a Mental Institution.  In my eyes, this is the…

“Legal highs: the dark side of medicinal chemistry”, by David Nichols of Purdue University’s pharmacology department, has hardly been published in the prestigious science journal Nature [469, 7 (2011…

The Shell and Mantle (a lovely pan-mollusca blog which regularly reminds me that cephalopods have some very cool cousins) kindly sent me a copy of China Miéville's Kraken after I whined about wanting…

Creating environmental protection trade barriers would likely result in a global catastrophe, a war bigger than World War I and World War II combined.  This is what most of us have been led to…

In The Economist: Once seen as the last resort for a bunch of lonely geeks, online-dating services have gradually shed much of the stigma formerly associated with them.  Sounds great, but when…

In The Economist: Once seen as the last resort for a bunch of lonely geeks, online-dating services have gradually shed much of the stigma formerly associated with them.  Sounds great, but when…

"Many unknown dinosaurs await discovery in rock formations all over the world, but some new species are hiding in plain sight. One such animal, described in an in-press Cretaceous Research paper, had…

"Many unknown dinosaurs await discovery in rock formations all over the world, but some new species are hiding in plain sight. One such animal, described in an in-press Cretaceous Research paper, had…

Brian Switek at Wired writes: Fossil birds don’t often receive good press. Numerous papers pass through the academic literature each year without even a nod from journalists, but the description of a…

Brian Switek at Wired writes: Fossil birds don’t often receive good press. Numerous papers pass through the academic literature each year without even a nod from journalists, but the description of a…

A question occurred to me the other day, which was to consider how science might have developed differently had humans possessed different senses.  As an example, humans are significantly visual…

I’ve been having a peek at the Science Codex, and come across this cluster of articles. Gesturing while talking helps change your thoughts New research says words, gestures translated by same brain…

There once was a time when the parts you had were all you were going to get; when something went wrong that was that.    As science and medicine progressed in leaps during the 20th century…

How does an electrical torch or flashlight work? According to the usual description, the lamp inside produces light, this light is shone on the objects we desire to see, partially reflected from…

Couple-and treatment-specific factors can be used to provide infertile couples with an accurate assessment of the likelihood of having a successful outcome following in-vitro fertilisation (IVF)…

It's not a cartoon, an ancient flightless bird was actually able to use its wings like a flail - or nunchaku, if your perspective is more Asian. Paleontologists have discovered that Xenicibis, a…

Turning and turning in the widening gyre     The falcon cannot hear the falconer;     Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;     Mere anarchy is loosed upon the…