A century ago, biofuels (wood, dung and crop residues) provided the great majority of household energy worldwide. With the advent of fuels such as oil and gas, and the more widespread availability of…

David Brin (author of The Postman) is interviewed this week as part of Nature's ongoing series of interviews with science writers: Brin got his PhD in physics and then left research to write science…

Last week, the New York Times published an item about putting wireless Internet on a school bus. Using a $200 router and $60/month for Internet service, a school district in Arizona has equipped a…

This is a science site and not a political or economics one and therefore we have poor grasp of things we know nothing about, like how missing cigarette tax revenue can possibly be responsible for…

The New Cosmetic Surgery Journalism Prize will be awarded by DDr. Heinrich for outstanding reporting on New Cosmetic Surgery techniques. That's right, journalists. You can win a prize from a…

Boring Science Produces Awesome results The simple scientific observation that you can't use the same energy twice is absolutely awesome! This is a further article in my occasional series about coal,…

In a column in Nature, Colin Macilwain suggests that bad science reporting is due in part to its relatively low cost: Propped up by the specious authority of their jargon and, most of all, by their…

Usually when the word "belief" comes up, the first thought is religion, but the general occurrence of beliefs is actually a much broader concept. Beliefs may be religious, supernatural,…

About once a week, my legges taken me (in a Middle English sort of way) over to lunch in the common room of our Department of Agriculture, where a kindly member of staff leaves copies of journals for…

Hypomelanosis conditions are known since ancient times. The most ancient names to describe these pictures were "Shwetakustha" and "Suitra". The term ´Shweta-Kushtha´, in the book Atharva-Veda of…

An investigative piece so explosive, no book company marketing hyperbole can be left out. "After reading BIG FAT LIES you will never trust the government again - Dr John Briffa" Hannah Sutter says…

The criteria used to assign patients to specific psychiatric disease categories are set out in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, published by the American Psychiatric…

You may think this is an odd claim from Think Training Development Limited, a company that specializes in Leadership Training, but it got them on a site with a million readers so, like a magician…

Vigorous two-party competition and modest salaries for lawmkaers are key to preventing pork barrel legislation and other bills that benefit only one lawmaker's constituents, finds a new study of…

Primitive stars are thought to have formed from material forged shortly after the Big Bang, 13.7 billion years ago and are mainly observed in the Milky Way. But now researchers are reporting that…

The southern limit of permafrost in the James Bay Region in northern Quebec, Canada is now 130 kilometers further north than it was 50 years ago, according to two researchers from the Department of…

An analysis of the skeletal remains found in Carthaginian burial urns could finally lay to rest the millennia-old conjecture that the ancient empire of Carthage regularly sacrificed its youngest…

Natural selection – the force that drives evolution – acts not only on whole organisms and individual genes, but also on gene networks, according to a new study appearing in Nature this week.The…

Biologists have struggled for many years to explain how it is possible that some people who carry a mutated gene don't express the trait or condition associated with the mutation. This common but…

Time for my irregular not-semi-annual roundup of recent science webtoons.  Today we have a pair of comics detailing the difference between Movie Science and Real Science.  Enjoy! AlexTues…