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Digital communications is no longer a free-for-all, it can take you right to courts of law if you use it and people don't like what it tells them about you.   A US court just slashed alimony payments (Cardone v. Cardone, 2011 WL 1566992, Conn.Super. April 4, 2011) to an ex-wife because of her blog posts, which detailed how she was sailing around the Caribbean for months with her new boyfriend while she rented out her apartment.    The poor sap ex-husband had been paying for 10 years and the court reduced it by 70% because she was clearly living with someone else and being subsidized by her ex-husband.

The Porton Group, the private equity partner of the British Ministry of Defence, has accused 3M Corporation of "negligence and possible recklessness putting lives at risk" due to "botched" 2007 clinical trials of a medical device called "BacLite," which can detect within five hours the presence of the potentially deadly MRSA/staph "superbug." The trials were conducted after notification of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and after seeking FDA advice, which 3M proceeded to ignore, according to Porton. 
As a result, Baclite was withdrawn and the group that sold it to 3M are blaming 3M.

In 2009, Nobel Laureate Carl Wieman published a series of articles here at Science 2.0 with ways to improve science education (see Why Not Try A Scientific Approach To Science Education?) and one of the ideas he advocated was using clickers and consensus groups along with generally remaking the traditional lecture method.

A few years ago, when 2% of astronomers decided Pluto should no longer a planet, the confusion was so great and the definition so arbitrary and so we now have five 'dwarf' planets in our solar system - Pluto, Ceres, Eris, Haumea and Makemake.  

With the discovery of so many new extrasolar planets, astronomers have observed that in some of these systems the star is spinning one way but the planet, a 'hot Jupiter',
a huge Jupiter-like planet in very close proximity to the central star, orbits the star in the opposite direction. 

Industry does quite a lot of basic research today but government funds the majority.  Prior to and during World War II those ratios were inverted and the private sector funded most basic research in hopes that the next big thing would be invented by them.

Leukotriene receptor antagonists (LTRAs)are easier to use and just as effective as conventional treatment with inhalers, according to a new study led by the University of East Anglia (UEA). 
Asthma is an increasing problem affecting around 300 million people worldwide and can significantly impact on a person's quality of life. It is a chronic condition characterized by inflammation of the airways causing wheezing, coughing, chest tightness and shortness of breath.   

50 years ago today Alan Shepard became the first American into space, launching at just after 9AM from the Space Coast of Florida and finishing just over 15 minutes and 117 miles up later. The most famous book (and movie) about the early days of NASA is "The Right Stuff" and it is surprisingly faithful in its telling.   Alan Shepard did pee in his suit and then say, after three hours of being immobilized in a tiny capsule, "Why don't you just fix your little problem and light this candle?"   but he was also a guy who said, "You know, being a test pilot isn't always the healthiest business in the world" so he understood the risks.   96% chance of survival was acceptable risk.

Over 100 million years ago, late Mesozoic forests were chock full of a diverse group of plants of the class Equisetopsida, though only one genus, Equisetum, commonly called scouring rush or horsetail, still exists today.   It is unclear about the evolutionary beginnings of the genus Equisetum - molecular dating places the divergence of the 15 extant species of the genus around 65 million years ago but the fossil record had it earlier than that, around 136 million years ago.

A community survey in England identified people with autism or asperger's syndrome  and found none of them knew they have it.    And autism turned out to be more prevalent in males with lower education and in government housing.Is autism causing people to have lower education and jobs or has the umbrella gotten so large it has become a blanket diagnosis for everyone not successful?The results from the first ever general population survey of autism in adulthood. They are based on a two phase epidemiological survey in England (7,461 screening interviews; 618 diagnostic) carried out in 2007. The findings are in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

Rice, the eponymous food of Asia, originated in China, and domesticated rice may have first appeared as far back as approximately 9,000 years ago in the Yangtze Valley of China. Previous research suggested domesticated rice may have two points of origin, India as well as China. The genome researchers used large-scale gene re-sequencing to re-assess the phylogeny, or evolutionary history, of domesticated rice using previously published datasets, some of which have been used to argue that indica and japonica rice have separate origins. Using newer computer algorithms, however, the researchers concluded these two species have the same origin because they have a closer genetic relationship to each other than to any wild rice species found in either India or China.

Acetaminophen overdose has become the leading cause of acute liver failure in the U.S.  How is that possible, when ingredients are printed clearly on the labels, along with warnings?  Acetaminophen's is in more than 600 over-the-counter and prescription medicines and people take billions of doses of over-the-counter pain relievers every year, but many do not pay attention to the active ingredients they contain, such as acetaminophen, according to a new Northwestern Medicine study.