In the 19th century, the Rosetta Stone allowed scholars to translate symbols left by an ancient civilization and decipher the meaning of Egyptian hieroglyphics.  But many mysteries remain about…

Genome sequencing is getting better and faster.  Two months ago we had the first draft of the neanderthal genome and now scientists from the University of Maryland have published their assembly…

The Wildlife Conservation Society announced at the International Coral Reef Initiative (ICRI), which is meeting this week in Phuket, Thailand, results showing that some coral reefs off East Africa…

A research team from Northeastern University and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has discovered that a residue of a process used to build arrays of titania nanotubes (that…

A trove of Benjamin Franklin letters has turned up in the British Library. Discovered by University of California, San Diego professor Alan Houston, the letters are copies of correspondence that hasn…

The circadian clock coordinates physiological and behavioral processes on a 24-hour rhythm, allowing animals to anticipate changes in their environment and prepare accordingly. Scientists already…

I promised myself that I would try to do a regular Wednesday blog about some aspect of my researches.  I thought I would start out with something I've been considering for awhile --…

Hank is worried about people who want to take us back to the stone age in response to environmental challenges. For my Earth Day post, here's someone who's talking sense (no, I'm not implying that…

When I was a kid, 'toxic' assets were not assets at all; they were called 'liabilities.'    That's why asset and liability columns exist on these things called 'spreadsheets.'   But I…

A process called ‘dark gulping’ may solve the mystery of the how supermassive black holes were able to form when the Universe was less than a billion years old. Dr Curtis Saxton will be presenting…

If your child has trouble with math, give her some gum and send her to school. Researchers at a Texas medical institution say gum-chewing improves math scores. Researchers at the…

Social media is a funny creature.   Try explaining it to someone in a third world country.  Heck, try explaining it to someone who lives next door and isn't on a social media site. We're…

I have recently been contacted by a friend who is worried at the decline in numeracy in the West.  He asked me what I thought of the following: In 2005, Newt Gingrich (who had been on the Hart…

Rita Levi-Montalcini, Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1986, turns 100 years old today: she was born on April 22nd, 1909 -before World War I had begun! "Ok," you might say, "she's probably bedridden and…

This is part 1 of 6 in a brief series describing the history of English and its grammar. What is Grammar? A grammar is a set of rules for the communal use of a language. A language can never become a…

I recently came across a radio lecture given by Dr Lee Alan Dugatkin on 7.6.2007, titled "Is Goodness Natural?" It deserves comment. (An article on the same subject but with some differences in text…

This week, researchers and scientists at UCLA are doing something unusual: They are organizing a demonstration against the violent tactics of certain animal rights groups. This week, people in labs…

It's Earth Day, in case you can't tell by our swanky green Earth logo in the header, and that means people will be thinking about Nature (the bitch, not the magazine) and our impact on her.   I…

Researchers writing in Nature magazine say the fossil skeleton of a newly discovered carnivorous animal, Puijila darwini, is a "missing link" in the evolution of the group that today includes seals,…

Using information from a suite of telescopes, astronomers have discovered a mysterious, giant object that existed at a time when the universe was only about 800 million years old. Objects such as…