Fuel produced from various animal fats is similar to biodiesel manufactured using ethanol from corn. But if the price of animal fat rose sharply, no one would really notice, since no one really eats…

Shale is the source of the United States' current natural gas boom and the lower greenhouse gas emissions it has brought. As if that is not wonderful enough, it could help solve another energy…

The Drudge Report is saying that "Cosmos" ratings are a disaster and, I as I discussed in Is "Cosmos" Suffering From Unrealistic Expectations? the overnights showed numbers down from the premiere,…

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) evaporate easily in the air but they help suppress a deer hunter's worst enemy - smells.  And that science of deer hunting may soon help researchers…

Exposure to media that promotes conspiracy theories may increase belief in them, but exposure to debunking information can decrease that belief, a new study has found. The report, published in the…

The first reported direct detection of gravitational waves via the B-mode polarization of the CMB may have supported the simplest and most popular inflationary models.  Results from the European…

An international collaboration recently analyzed existing cohort studies and randomized trials on coronary risk and fatty acid intake and drew a conclusion that will surprise you if you only get your…

In mainstream media, everywhere from Fox News to Time (and here on Science 2.0, though with a little more skepticism) a bizarre study is all the rage - pesticides and other environmental toxins will…

Even after over 1,500 years frozen in Antarctic ice, moss can come back to life and continue to grow. Writing in Current Biology, the team report that they observed moss regeneration after at least 1…

The antibiotic-resistant bacterium Klebsiella pneumoniae sequence type 258 (ST258) is the predominant cause of human infections among bacteria classified as carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae…

In Five Things Neil deGrasseTyson’s “Cosmos” Gets Wrong at The Federalist and Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey -The Review on Science 2.0, I gave the creators a bit of a pass…

Life is just packed full of surprises. You just never know when you'll get stuck in an elevator with the finalists for the new Victoria's Secret Catalog (all of whom just happen to be in estrus).…

Please observe the following unusual locomotive behavior which begins at around 55 seconds into this video – when Groucho Marx starts to run. Groucho is displaying a behaviour which scientists now…

Almost 14 billion years ago, the universe we inhabit burst into existence in an extraordinary event that initiated the Big Bang. In the first fleeting fraction of a second, the universe expanded…

Does BPA make you fat? As with most questions related to the common chemical bisphenol A (BPA), the answer to that question may depend on who you ask.  The question is a particularly relevant…

The tau lepton is a particle of very complex phenomenology. Although point-like as its lighter counterparts - the electron and the muon - the tau has a quite respectable mass, 1.77 GeV, which makes…

This semester I’m teaching a graduate level course on “Hume Then and Now,” which aims at exploring some of the original writings by David Hume, particularly the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding…

New evidence gathered by NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft at Mercury solves an apparent enigma about Mercury's evolution.  The data indicate the tiny planet closest to the sun, only slightly larger…

The agave's claim to fame is as the plant from which the distilled adult beverage Tequila, named after the nearby town that made it famous, is produced. But that may change. A sweetener created from…

Colon cancer incidence rates have dropped sharply - 30 percent in the U.S. in the last 10 years, among adults 50 and older. The drop has been attributed to the widespread uptake of colonoscopy, with…