Sea ice may have extended to the equator 716.5 million years ago, bringing new precision to a "snowball Earth" event long suspected to have taken place around that time, geologists report this week…

Flowing lava probably carved at least one of the river-like channels on the surface of Mars, according to results of a study presented at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference at NASA's Goddard…

I seem to have developed a reputation for hating networks, but really, it's just tough love. Complex, adaptive, self-organizing networks are fascinating (and inspired the title of this blog), and…

So, I was going to blog about the new baby giant octopus (complete with webcam!) at the Smithsonian. But, it's not really a squid. Then I was going to talk about sperm whales collectively hunting…

RAWR RAWR RAWR RAWR RAWR I'M A MONSTAH FACE MONKEY JEW

Naked Beauty On Paradise Island Did you notice that I posted this article under 'geology'.  That's because it's about geology.  You know - rocks and fossils.  This article is also…

Check out the Super Star Edition at Mauka to Makai, which, this month, is almost as exciting as watching Shaun White and Apolo Ohno. There are a bunch of posts commemorating Darwin's birthday, which…

Since we're frequently quoting, linking to, and commenting on someone else's copyrighted stuff, those of us who blog should have a strong interest in our copyright rights. Ars Technica has a piece…

During a meeting of Plant tissue culture association wonderful explanations about the genomes of rice strctural and functional genomics are presented. At the same time a a dozen or more presentations…

John Timmer comments on the problem of modern biomedical research and statistics: we can now measure so much more than our statistics can handle. In a typical genome-wide association study, you're…

The Symphony of Science is a project inspired by the work of Carl Sagan and has become well-known for producing short videos setting to music the wise words of scientists. The above video is the 4th…

I first spotted this as a small advert on Nature. "Help Reduce the Placebo Effect in Clinical Drug Trials" I smiled cynically and just had to check it out - and I was right! "Placebo responses in as…

I recently wrote about research on people's beliefs using fMRI technology to see how different parts of the brain were activated. Near the end of their paper, the researchers commented that such…

A Mailman School of Public Health study examining the effects of institutional discrimination on the psychiatric health of lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) individuals found an increase in psychiatric…

Astronomers have discovered a star that may have been among the second generation of stars to form after the Big Bang. Located in the dwarf galaxy Sculptor some 290,000 light-years away, S1020549…

A new study in Environmental Science and Technology reports that soil microbes have become progressively more resistant to antibiotics over the last 60 years, despite more stringent rules on the use…

A low-cost water purification technique that uses seeds from the Moringa oleifera tree can produce a 90.00% to 99.99% bacterial reduction in previously untreated water, according to a paper published…

Scientists writing this week in Geophysical Research Letters say they have pinpointed six spots on the remote Pacific Antarctic Ridge, 1,000 miles from the west coast of Antarctica, where they think…

Just as they would in face-to-face dating, people who lie about themselves on internet dating services probably are people-pleasers who want to present themselves in the most favorable light to get…

A newly discovered species that shared many characteristics with dinosaurs but fell just outside of the dinosaur family lived 10 million years earlier than the oldest known dinosaurs. Researchers…