Researchers here have used sediment from the deep ocean bottom to reconstruct a record of ancient climate dating back more than 500,000 years.   The data were extracted from  the top 65…

The interstellar stuff that became incorporated into the planets and life on Earth has younger cosmic roots than theories predict, according to the University of Chicago postdoctoral scholar Philipp…

Is Internet expression a fundamental right?   Certainly a subset of the modern generation has  demonstrated an irrational sense of entitlement about free content, to the detriment of media…

Scientists say they have succeeded in treating immune cells in a way that enables them to inhibit unwanted immune reactions such as organ rejection. Their results have now been published in the…

Darwin knew that some mechanism had to govern how our physical features and behavioral traits have evolved over centuries, passing from a parent to their offspring with natural selection favoring…

It's two inches long, is shaped like a phallus and is commonly associated with wood.   A middle school joke?  No, it's a new species of stinkhorn mushroom discovered on the African island…

A team of researchershas discovered a biological marker for neovascular age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the leading cause of blindness in older adults.  The marker, a receptor known as…

Dr Jennifer Loveland-Curtze and a team of scientists from Pennsylvania State University say that a  bacterium trapped more than a mile under under glacial ice in Greenland for over 120,000 years…

Almost 140 years ago, Charles Darwin formalized what many people already believed - mate selection isn't pure chance;  it's a deliberate process that  involves numerous factors, including…

When you go to New York City, to Central Park, to the American Museum of Natural History, to the Hayden Planetarium, to a seminar hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson, on the entire cosmos, you might think…

The Silent Ape : On The Origins Of Language This article is a highly speculative account of how our distant ancestors evolved the capacity for speech, together with the evolved capacities that would…

The Brightest Candles #2The brightest candles are the people whose light remains long after they are gone. Imagine all the peopleliving life in peaceyou may say I'm a dreamerbut I'm not the only oneI…

Conception is not a meeting of equals, as scientists have said for decades. The egg is a relatively large, impressive biological factory compared with the tiny sperm, which delivers to the egg one…

Doom and gloom types always want to lament that the presence of people is killing the Earth.  Not so, say California Institute of Technology (Caltech) scientists.   At least on a cosmic…

Almost 90 percent of the world’s population will not have timely access to affordable supplies of vaccines and antiviral agents in the current influenza A (H1N1) pandemic but inexpensive generic…

Newborn babies have immature immune systems, making them highly vulnerable to severe infections and unable to mount an effective immune response to most vaccines, thereby frustrating efforts to…

Today I visited the 53rd international art exposition at the Biennale di Venezia, which this year is titled "Fare Mondi" (making worlds). I am posting below a few pictures I took of the installations…

New Hominid Discovered :  Anoiapithecus brevirostris Edit: were you looking for - New Hominid discovered in Denisova Cave? New Hominid Discovered :  Anoiapithecus brevirostris A study…

  More World Science Festival articles can be found here.

D'you dig the Geek Off? Did you email your answers to geekoff@gmail.com? If not, too late sucka! That is, too late until Monday morning, when we play another round of the feud. Yep, every week there…