A school and symposium in Data Science in (Astro)-Particle Physics and Cosmology will be held on March 25 to 27 in Braga (Portugal). I am going to lecture on Machine Learning there, while prof. Glen…

Through our evolutionary history, change is the one constant. 99.9999% of species that have ever existed are extinct and new ones emerged that adapted to constantly changing environments. …

UPDATE - NO HIT - AS PREDICTED BY ASTRONOMERS - The red top tabloids were quoting from something astronomers said 16 years ago. They aren't like the false prophet date setters. If they give a date…

If you read media accounts, Republicans deny global warming and evolution while Democrats deny vaccines and GMOs. Republicans hate immigrants and Democrats hate unborn babies. Yet such simple 'us'…

Rembrandt van Rijn was a master of light and shadow and a characteristic plasticity generated by a technique called impasto. A new study shows he was also something of a chemist. An analysis of…

If you've read anything about computers for the last 25 years, you've read the hype about quantum computing and how it is going to be better and faster and with less heat and replace conduction-based…

On March 25 to 27 will be held the school titled "Data Science in (astro)particle physics and cosmology", in Braga (Portugal). The lecturers are prof. Glen Cowan (RHUL), who will cover Statistics,…

Do you prefer to rise early with the lark or stay up late with the owl? Your preference turns out to be partly decided by your genes. Our genetic study of nearly 700,000 people has revealed new…

Though our guts contain a trillion bacteria in various compositions, it's become popular to claim any detectable change is a bad thing. Unless it is to sell yogurt, where no detectable change is…

Nothing killed science culture more than Spock from the 1960s television show "Star Trek." He was wildly popular because he was so logical and reasoned. Emotions did not enter into his decisions.…

In 2015, I predicted that someone was going to end up in the hospital due to overdoses on supplements. But don't you always say they are useless placebos? a friend asked. No, they are not all…

Like " I had insomnia last night" and "I am so OCD", medical terms often become colloquial. So it is with people who say they had a "stomach flu." There are stomach virusus, but what many…

As the world's most powerful economy, we read a lot about how America needs to do more to use cleaner energy, and less of it.  The data show we already do. Energy is a basic need, like food, and…

Chicken eggs are already used for growing viruses that are used as vaccines, such as the flu jab but science is going one better; chickens that are genetically modified to produce human proteins in…

One to two percent of people have celiac disease, and the first thing they will tell you is that it is not a fad diet, no matter how many books or Dr. Oz segments tout gluten-free. To celiac patients…

Anti-science activists are having a field day on social media, happy that a poorly designed study can let them claim that human sperm is being damaged by modern pesticides, even though the study…

The Doomsday Clock, a public relations stunt created by Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (1) remains stuck at two minutes until midnight. Just like it was in 1953, the height of the Cold War,…

     Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) consists of Crohn’s Disease and Ulcerative Colitis. Both are the result of dysregulation of the immune system leading to intestinal…

When a sneeze happens, around 100,000 contagious germs for things like the common cold, influenza and tuberculosis move through the air at speeds of up to 100 miles per hour.  It sounds…

In the past 30 years, food allergies have become increasingly common in the United States. Changes to human genetics can’t explain the sudden rise. That is because it takes many generations for…