Climate Change Debate Ends In Global Accord I would so love to see that headline for real; wouldn't you? I can just imagine some of the big names on both sides of the debate coming together for a…

MEDIEVAL MEDICINE         Post-mortem examinations were rare well into the Middle Ages, largely due to religious and intellectual scruples. This early representation (c.…

Let me also say what I don't mean by final, underlying, laws of physics. I don't mean that other branches of physics are in danger of being replaced by some ultimate version of elementary particle…

This is an authorized English translation of the paper by an outstandingRussian economist Mikhail Gennadievich Delyagin, as appeared in theRussian-speaking Internet on 19.03.2009 under the following…

Cannot resist posting the following paperclip, grabbed from a news site this afternoon (it's a Sunday, a critical detail you should not overlook; and this is an Italian newspaper, as should be…

Green jobs—great. But gray jobs, maybe an even better bet. If there is a single graphic that everyone concerned with the nation’s future should have tattooed on their eyeballs, my vote goes to this…

In light of some comments below, and what appears to be an inability to follow a simple link, I accept it is time to rewrite this blog post as one seamless narrative. Thanks to those comments that…

This American Life from Chicago Public Radio has an interesting story about the history of psychiatry with regards to homosexuality: why homosexuality used to be considered a mental illness, and why…

IPCC Seeks Independent Review Committee For 5th Report The IPCC has started work on the preparation of its Fifth Assessment Report (AR5).  They are currently looking for experts who can act as…

Why did the Babylonians and the Greeks approach astronomy so differently? In my last post I quoted Toulmin and Goodfield from their history of dynamics and astronomy, The Fabric of the Heavens, where…

Glacier Sticks Out Tongue - Scientists Say Aaaah! Ice tongues are a fascinating area of study.They have much to teach us about the life cycles of glaciers. Many, many years ago, a glacier stuck out…

I have recently watched Jill Bolte Taylor's interview at TED. Taylor is a neoroanatomist who specializes in the post-mortem examination of the human brain. In 1996 she experienced a stroke and was…

The CDF collaboration has recently released new results from a search for what is probably the clearest signature of Higgs boson decay: pairs of high-mass photon candidates. I am very glad to see…

“Is religion a science?” This may seem an odd question with which to start, but this is the very first question Aquinas asks in his monumental Summa Theologica. “Among the philosophical sciences one…

New Scientist tells us that some of my former IBM Research colleagues have been busy looking at ways to give bloggers inspiration: Want to get more people to read your blog? A software tool that…

A New Scientist article, Born believers: how your brain creates God, takes us through some recent research with children that suggests belief in supernatural beings is somehow hard-wired into the…

Let's Start Using Our (Si) Brains scientists have sequenced the human genome -- the blueprint for all of the proteins in biology -- but how can we understand what these proteins do and how they work…

Globally environmental changes are happening very fast. Drying up of Aral sea and Sambher lake is one example. Drying up water bodies are another concern globally. Although 3 fourth of the earth is…

Here are the top ten science headlines ripped, raw and bleeding, from this month's huge AAAS uber-science meeting. The National Association of Science Writers sponsored 10 undergraduate science…

Migraine sufferers have long complained about how their headaches worsen with bright light, and in case you ever doubted their complaints, Rami Burstein and other researchers from Harvard Medical…