You've probably seen movies of orbital space habs spinning for artificial gravity. But did you know, that nobody has ever tested this to see how it works out in practise? We know that weightlessnes…

While the developed world has levels of scientific and technical capacity that allow crop pests to be effectively managed, poorer nations, where food production is incredibly important, are caught in…

You've probably seen movies of orbital space habs spinning for artificial gravity. But did you know, that nobody has ever tested this to see how it works out in practise? We know that weightlessnes…

Cool roofs, green roofs and hybrids of the two are all of the rage for city planners who want to do something about greenhouse-gas induced warming. They sound great but is it going to work, or is it…

America has a looming cost of services crisis but in the UK it's already here; people who retire expecting a certain standard of living have overwhelmed the tax base. To keep people working longer,…

There used to be a saying that we should all try to be the person our dogs think we are. In the 21st century we idealize ourselves in online avatars, according to a new paper in Psychological Science…

Hemp plants with scientifically enhanced increase in oleic acid could lead to an attractive cooking oil that is similar to olive oil in terms of fatty acid content - but has a much longer shelf life…

To ancient Romans, the depiction of female nudes in mosaics were meant to invoke beauty, carnality and eroticism while male bodies reflected determination, strength and power, according to work from…

To ancient Romans, the depiction of female nudes in mosaics were meant to invoke beauty, carnality and eroticism while male bodies reflected determination, strength and power, according to work from…

Here comes another post on ethics! This one is, I must admit, somewhat meta-ethical, despite my recent post about the limited value of meta-ethical discussions when it comes to debates in first-order…

Since its discovery in the early 1990s, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) contrast has become the mainstay of human brain imaging. Today, the…

Since its discovery in the early 1990s, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) contrast has become the mainstay of human brain imaging. Today, the…

Only one species of hoatzins exists in South America today - or anywhere else.  Opisthocomus hoazin, also known as the Stinkbird or Canje Pheasant, has an unclear evolutionary history but was…

The origin of life remains a great mystery in biology. Billions of years of continental drift erased most of the record, and all that's left of the first half billion years of evolution are some…

One of the difficulties of judging the ways of people is the fact that highly intelligent individuals can at the same time be in the grip of a totally cockeyed ideology.  One reads things like…

You don't need to show kids a frying egg in a pan to get the message across about drugs; just show them this statistic.  Heroin and cocaine addicts in Spain have a fatality rate that is 14.3…

50,000 years ago, the Arctic tundra was not as drab as you might think, being an Ice Age - it was filled with colorful wildflowers and these wildflowers helped sustain woolly mammoths and other giant…

A lot of coffee is grown on and around Kilimanjaro, which towers almost 20,000 feet in the air.  The most traditional form of cultivation can be found in the gardens of the Chagga people. In…

Stampedes occur often, and not just in wild animal herds. Previously, physicists developed numerous models of crowd evacuation dynamics based on disasters such as the yearly Muslim Hajj or of the…

Wal-Mart caters to people with less money and there has long been a link between poverty and crime. Criminologists have instead taken the additional step of implicating Wal-Mart in crime rates.…