swashbuckle, v., 1) to buckle one's swash; 2) to be awesome in the manner of a puma/ninja/Don Juan hybrid    - Let's pretend this is from a really, really cool dictionary …

I like stirring, so here is this recent University Press Release (27 January 2009): 'Censoring' language is key to female survival in the boardroom New research from the University of Reading argues…

I like stirring, so here is this recent University Press Release (27 January 2009): 'Censoring' language is key to female survival in the boardroom New research from the University of Reading argues…

Investigators from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and a Bolzano colleague have written another chapter in a murder case over 5,000 years old. New investigations  reconstructed the…

In 2007 chocolate was all the rage, with Mars, Inc.-funded scientists even having their own panel at the AAAS meeting.  In 2008, blueberries were the rage.     In 2009, says Dr. Luis…

Astronomers have observed the intense heating of a distant planet as it swung close to its parent star, providing important clues to the atmospheric properties of the planet.  With that data,…

An international team of researchers  has uncovered the first gene linked to the most common type of epilepsy, called Rolandic epilepsy. One out of every five children with epilepsy is diagnosed…

The team operating NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit plans diagnostic tests this week after Spirit did not report some of its weekend activities, including a request to determine its orientation…

Recent studies have suggested that autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may be more prevalent among children born very prematurely. The early symptoms of ASD are also associated with other conditions…

The Scientific business of Thomson Reuters today announced the results of a study showing that the United States' share of scientific research has shrunk while Asia-Pacific's share of output has…

Name it and the milk will come, say scientists at Newcastle University.  It's not "Field of Dreams" it's Milk of Dreams.   Or whatever analogy you want to use for a correlation-causation…

Rocks formed only under the extreme heat and friction during earthquakes, called pseudotachylytes, may be more abundant than previously reported, according to new research focused on eight faults…

How the brain keeps tabs on what happened and when is still a matter of speculation but a computational model developed by scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies now suggests that…

We get a spectacular new into the active galaxy Centaurus A - NGC 5128 -  as the jets and lobes emanating from the central black hole have been imaged at submillimeter wavelengths for the first…

Taking up valuable land and growing edible crops for biofuels poses a dilemma: Is it ethical to produce inefficient renewable energies at the expense of an already malnourished population? David…

Is it possible to share a pain that you observe in another but have never actually experienced yourself?  A new study uses brain-imaging  to try and answer this question and the research,…

Show me the science: 30 days of evolution blogging, day 1 Birds are the modern day descendants of dinosaurs, or as paleontologist Kevin Padian likes to say, birds are dinosaurs. But how did birds…

Via Pharyngula, some non-scientist MD thinks that ~21,000 protein-coding genes aren't nearly enough to make a human (which of course then means that evolution is wrong): 4) The Human Genome Project…

Triceratops had three horns but it was not just to impress the females, says a research study led by Andrew Farke, curator at the Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology, located on the campus of The…

This is so cool (and the original source is here, but you have to scroll down a while to get to it).  Just don't let it get out to those crazy people who think that scientists don't do anything…