I have always held a fascination for transposons, or jumping genes as they are sometimes called. Part of this interest may be due to my background in Drosophila genetics, where a transposon called a…

40 is the new 30, but maybe it should be the new 80. A report from BBC says mental abilities start to dwindle at age 27, "marking the start of old age." The story refers to a study by Timothy…

"Asking for help is a universally dreaded endeavor,"  M. Nora Klaver says in her anti-self-help book, "Mayday! Asking for help in times of need. Seven out of ten people admit they could have…

Extreme violence resulting in multiple deaths occurs with mounting frequency around the world. March 11, 2009, a teen in Germany slaughtered 15 people, UK News reports. http://uk.news.yahoo.com/5…

Need a few Irish Gaelic words for the pub? Want a few trivial tidbits to impress your fellow revelers? Plan to discuss science (eolaíocht) over pints? Read on! Take a PDF cheat sheet with you to…

I'll admit I'm a Plutophile. Whether it's called a planet or not, it's a very interesting place. Yet despite sending New Horizons to visit it (fastest launch ever!), despite the discovery of other…

Are we living in an age of stupidity? From the dawn of written history we have evidence of the development of the scientific method as a way of thinking. I believe the method has its origins in legal…

I have a curious mind and like to find out how and why things work. Unlike my husband and my two boys, I don’t necessarily take things apart to uncover how they operate (what is it with the Y…

They say a picture tells a thousand stories, but can it also tell how smart you are?  Yes, say UCLA researchers.  In a Journal of Neuroscience study, UCLA neurology professor Paul Thompson…

The next time an overnight snow begins to fall, take two bricks and place them side by side a few inches apart in your yard.  In the morning, the bricks will be covered with snow and barely…

NASA scientists analyzing the dust of meteorites say they have discovered new clues to a long-standing mystery about how life works on its most basic, molecular level. Over the last four years, the…

Eating dog meat is common in Asia. In two case studies published by PLoS Medicine, researchers analyzed situations in Hanoi where men died from laboratory-confirmed rabies. The first patient was a 48…

The Hubble Space Telescope recently captured a photo sequence of four moons of Saturn passing in front of their parent planet. The moons, from far left to far right, are icy white Enceladus and Dione…

Though the popular conception has been that "money can't buy happiness," studies have shown that wealth can play a role in enhancing happiness.    A study of American woman by a Princeton…

A novel motion sensor developed by the Fraunhofer Institutes for Applied Polymer Research IAP in Potsdam-Golm and for Computer Architecture and Software Technology FIRST in Berlin could  enable…

A new computerized method of testing could help world health officials better identify flu vaccines that are effective against multiple strains of the disease. Rice University scientists who created…

Tiny creatures at the bottom of the food chain called diatoms suck up nearly a quarter of the atmosphere's carbon dioxide, yet research by Michigan State University scientists suggests they could…

I've written perhaps four articles to date and I'm already tired of defining what an "allele" is.  Granted I encounter this annoying waste of writing time more frequently because…

Madison, WI, March 16, 2009 -- One of the most significant developments in agricultural growth in modern times has been the continuous and substantial increase in corn yield over the past 80 years in…

Maybe ESA’s Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) is destined to launch on the exact same date as Vanguard 1, the third artificial satellite to ever orbit our planet after…