As elections to renew the european parliaments get closer, the political arena in Italy fails to deal with the matters that should interest voters, and instead concentrates on the behavior of Italy's…

Do you have what it takes to be Scientific Blogging's alpha geek?  Well it’s time put your geek where your mouth is…IF YOU CAN! But first a warning: yes, you could Google for these answers, but…

Sequence gaps in human chromosome 15 have been closed by the application of 454 technology. Researchers writing in Genome Biology have described a simple and scalable method for finishing non…

We're somewhat lost in how to meet future carbon footprint goals.  Heck, Germany should have been able to just close a few Soviet-era East German factories and hit their Kyoto protocol targets…

Penguin poo (guano) stains, visible from space, have helped British scientists locate emperor penguin breeding colonies in Antarctica. Knowing their location provides a baseline for monitoring their…

"We were on a break," is just an excuse likely to get you yelled at today but a new study at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Gamboa, Panama says there may be some long-term value in it…

African-Americans are significantly more likely to be sanctioned by the United States welfare system than Caucasians, according to research published in the June issue of the American Sociological…

The terms 'athlete' and 'jock' are sometimes used interchangeably - especially be people who dislike athletes.   And it's usually negative.   Due to that, only 18 percent of students in a…

A University of Leicester student will be presenting his discovery of 425 million year-old fossils found in rocks from the Silurian period of geological time in Herefordshire.  The fossils…

    What follows is a sociobiological rebuttal of white supremacy.  It purports to be a proof that no race can lay the claim to outright superiority as the best evolved example…

Just heading out to Princeton to collect in some of the Eocene lakebed sites. Aside from Ginko, pine and alder, one of the most common finds here are March flies, also known as love bugs or…

The Buzzword Blog #4 : Irrational What does 'irrational' mean?The term 'irrational' is too often just another  buzzword.  It is used very loosely, even by scientists, to imply that somebody…

When we think of volcanic conditions, our minds leap to images of vast eruptions like Mount St. Helens in Washington State, or lava oozing down the slopes of Kilauea on the Big Island of Hawaii. With…

The catholic church has long lost its race against islamism for the religious institution with more adepts. And they ache for it: you can tell from their resentful remarks on the matter. Bishops and…

Random Noise #12.5 : Irrational  Numbers I'm far too rational to blog about other people's irrationality. I'll just get on with writing my next article and leave writing about silly…

It should be clear that the vast majority of biological interactions are largely indifferent to others, while there is also a high degree of cooperation as necessitated by the evolution of sexual…

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…

Random Noise #12 : Freedom of Speech and of the Press Freedom of speech is a right and a duty. Faced with injustice, we have both a right and a duty - a duty-right - to speak out against it.…

Nanobots seem to be well on their way to drastically expanding human life. Clusters of them are already regenerating the spinal cords of mice (Project, 2007), and soon it should be possible to…

A new, international study found that the combination of two drugs delays disease progression for patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Results from the Phase III “ATLAS” trial…