"We understand the relation between houses and walls. But it would be hard to cross the gap between houses and bricks without having enough intermediate concepts such as that of the wall."(Marvin…

Recently, I was asked to help around a group that was designing a settlement on the moon. As I worked with them, I found the work increasingly absorbing and I soon started researching some questions…

Just what would time travel look like?  This question was posed to me by a movie director in L.A..  It turns out there are three parts to this question-- what physics suggests, what movies…

New Scientist reports on a study that shows how bad “secret questions” are at protecting your accounts: What’s your secret question? Your mother’s maiden name? Your first pet? For many people, facts…

Any road with a loose surface like or gravel or snow can develop ripples that make driving a very shaky experience. A team of physicists from Canada, France and the United Kingdom have recreated this…

The Amazon River has been around for 11 million years ago and in its shape for the last 2.4 million years ago, according to a study on two boreholes drilled in proximity of the mouth of the Amazon…

In the 1980s, a popular hypothesis was that any number of people were suffering from trauma they knew nothing about; dissociative amnesia, or repressed memories. At issue is how to prove whether…

A new monkey has been discovered in a remote region of the Amazon in Brazil, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) . The monkey is related to saddleback tamarins, which include several…

Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have devised a viable way to manipulate a single 'bit' in a quantum processor without disturbing the information stored in its…

The mystery of a rare bat's unusually large nose has been solved, according to an article in Physical Review Letters. The adult Bourret's horseshoe bat, known scientifically as the Rhinolophus…

Severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is associated with lower cognitive function in older adults, according to research from Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Researchers compared…

Researchers have used genetific modification (GM) to bring salt-tolerant plants a little closer to reality. The research team – based at the University of Adelaide's Waite Campus in Australia – has…

DNA : When Is A Code Not A Code ?Stephen C. Meyer is an intelligent design advocate and a co-founder of the Discovery Institute. The core argument of Stephen Meyer’s book, Signature in a Cell,…

Let me start by saying that I am not an economist. I’ve always been somewhat put off by the topic and felt that it was largely based on supposition and little science. After observing the antics in…

Unfortunately I was right: at least in predicting that the INFN exam dubbed "R5" would not go deserted. The R5 exam, which in exchange for a stressful pair of written tests (which I am trying to get…

"The INFN directorate may have invented the Identity operator in the space of qualifying exams" Guido Volpi (commenting on FB on the very offensive R5 exam held today by INFN post-docs).

Though New Orleans residents were told to evacuate days before the arrival of Hurricane Katrina, no one could have predicted the real extent of the devastation that would follow.  Researchers…

Scientists at Burnham Institute for Medical Research (Burnham) say they have discovered that specialized complex sugar molecules (glycans) that anchor cells into place act as tumor suppressors in…

If you were born at a time when social security numbers were not required, you can probably recognize other people from your home state if you see or hear their numbers.    You may have…

Parasites don't get a lot of respect these days but we may have to reconsider that.  In spite of their nasty reputation, they may have given us the joy of sex. What's so great about sex? If you…