When Charles Darwin published his landmark book On the Origin of Species(*) in 1859, his theories on evolution were quickly accepted by the vast majority of scientists. The general public, however,…

John Hawks reviews an article by Roni Caryn Rabin on the connection with glucose metabolism and age related cognitive decline. The original authors made clear that we remember: Previous…

That's because there is going to be so much great, non-technical writing in honor of Darwin's 200th birthday and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On The Origin of Species. We're going to…

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) Project might restart in 2009 Summer. I wrote twice about the incident that caused its shutdown on 19 September 2008. First,…

Einstein and Bohr – No names loom larger in the history of twentieth-century physics, and rightly so, Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr being the figures most prominently associated with the relativity…

Kawasaki Disease, recently in the news due to the death of Hollywood film star John Travolta's son Jett, has had some genetic variations identified in a genome-wide association study published in…

Or just try to change the law: There's the famous false story of the state that tried to redefine the fundamental mathematical constant pi to 3, but of course no one would ever be that stupid. Though…

Whenever one discusses the underlying genetic influences on human behavior, one is opening themselves up to being labelled a determinist.  Part of the reason for that is a total misunderstanding…

The ultimate cause of human behavior is the mind. The mind, an emergent property from the workings of collections of neurons, hormones, proteins, and other biochemical agents, controls everything…

2009 is the international year of astronomy, celebrating the 400th anniversary of Galileo's observations of Venus, Saturn and Jupiter published in Sidereus Nuncius (Starry Messenger). Unlike numerous…

Galaxy M87 is unique for three reasons.  First, it   is easily observable,    It has twin jets, each some 5,000 light years long, and most importantly  its core has little or…

The eyes of deep-ocean dwelling creatures are always fascinating - in the near darkness of thousands of feet underwater, a very dim flash of light can mean an organism has found its meal for the…

The first people to arrive in America traveled as at least two separate groups to arrive in their new home at about the same time, according to new genetic evidence published Current Biology. After…

New research into the effects of antipsychotic drugs commonly prescribed to Alzheimer's patients concludes that the medication nearly doubles risk of death over three years. The study, funded by the…

Southerners die from stroke more than in any other U.S. region, but exactly why that happens is unknown. A new report by researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) and the…

New cells are born every day in the brain's hippocampus, but what controls this birth has remained a mystery. Reporting in Science, neuroscientists at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine…

If global warming projections turn out to be accurate, a rapidly warming climate would seriously alter crop yields in the tropics and subtropics by the end of this century and could leave half the…

The lowest ever levels of oxygen in humans have been reported in climbers on an expedition led by UCL (University College London) doctors. The world-first measurements of blood oxygen levels in…

Many objects in the universe emit radio waves. In 1931, American physicist Karl Jansky first detected radio static from our own Milky Way galaxy. Similar emission from other galaxies creates a…

In popular legend, Lucrezia Borgia, Duchess of Ferrara (1480- 1519), stands falsely accused of poisoning her second husband. Victor Hugo portrayed her in thinly veiled fiction as a tragic femme…